984-h 


UC-NRLF 


51    33D 


8 

10 


A  LEAGUE  OF  JUSTICE 


IS  IT  RIGHT  TO  ROB  ROBBERS? 


rvlORRISON    I.  SWIFT. 


PRICE  FIFTY  CENTS, 


BOSTON 

THE  COMMONWEALTH  SOCIETY 

9  NASSAU   STRKKT 
1893 


CONTENTS. 

I.  The   League   Gardening   at  the  Roots  of 

the  Social  System            ...  i 

II.  Brains  and  Capitalists  Fall  Out      .          .  6 

III.  The  Good  Deeds  of  Some  Curtailed      .  14 

IV.  Organizing              .          .          .          .          .  17 
V.  A  Free  Newspaper        .          .          .          .  19 

VI.  Lawyers  No  More          ....  22 

VII.  Education,  For  the  First  Time               .  28 

VIII.  The  Invasion  of  Knowledge          .          .  33 

IX.  Transfiguration  of  the  Churches            .  40 

X.  The  Waterloo  of  "Society"           .         .  42 

XI.  Political  Parties  Also             ...  46 

XII.  Discovery  on  a  Sufficient  Scale               .  53 

XIII.  The  Trial               60 

XIV.  The  Founder's  Story              ...  67 
XV..  Sentence       ......  79 

XVI.  The  People,  at  Last      ....  82 


364782 


A  LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE, 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE     LEAGUE      GARDENING      THE      ROOTS      OF     THE 
SOCIAL   SYSTEM. 

Four  men  met  together  in  the  garret  where  one  of 
them  lived.  They  were  the  trusted  clerks  of  great 
commercial  houses.  Through  the  hands  of  each 
passed  daily  sums  equal  to  fortunes.  They  were  men 
of  devoted  honesty;  not  one  but  would  have  died 
rather  than  take  for  himself  a  penny  of  his  employers' 
funds.  The  salary  of  two  of  these  men  was  nine  hun- 
dred dollars  a  year.  The  others  received  one  thousand 
each.  They  were  also  allowed  a  vacation  of  two  weeks 
in  the  summer.  With  families  or  friends  to  support, 
their  salaries  did  not  take  them  far  from  the  town 
during  this  resting  time.  They  were  not  old  men,  but 
a  look  of  age  was  upon  each  of  their  faces,  and  all 
were  prematurely  gray. 

They  spoke  with  grave  faces.  Evidently  they  had 
come  too  far  in  life  to  act  from  ill-balanced  enthusiasm. 
They  took  no  oath  of  fidelity  to  one  another,  nor  to  the 
cause  they  were  undertaking.  An  oath  would  not 
have  deepened  their  loyalty. 

One  of  them  said:  "If  we  are  skillful  and  do  not 
take  amounts  too  large,  we  may  hope  to  escape  detec- 
tion five  or  even  ten  years.  Soon  or  late  each  will  be 


2  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

discovered,  imprisoned  and  his  family  disgraced.  Is 
the  cause  worthy  of  this  sacrifice?" 

"  It  is,"  they  responded  in  firm  tones. 

They  remained  in  conference  two  hours  arranging 
the  plans  of  their  work. 

A  month  later  ten  men  assembled  in  the  same  gar- 
ret. The  society  had  grown  through  the  admission 
of  six  comrades.  '  The  four  founders  reported  their 
progress. 

"I  have  taken  one  thousand  dollars,"  "I  eight 
hundred,"  "I  thirteen  hundred,"  "I  two  thousand 
dollars,"  they  said  in  turns. 

The  first  speaker  continued :  ' '  My  most  difficult  part 
has  been  to  distribute  what  I  took.  I  helped  several 
destitute  families,  but  with  inadequate  sums,  for  fear 
of  the  suspicions  question,  where  I  came  by  the  money. 
But  through  a  friend  who  does  not  ask  questions,  I 
saved  a  hard  working  market  gardener  from  losing  his 
little  plot  of  ground  through  mortgage.  I  have  five 
hundred  dollars  left." 

The  others  made  similar  reports. 

"  This  difficulty  is  already  disposed  of,"  the  presi- 
dent said.  "One  has  joined  us  who  is  not  a  clerk, 
and  who  can  be  our  distributing  agent,  judiciously 
applying  what  sums  are  needed  without  drawing  sus- 
picion to  himself  or  us.  He  may  pass  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  philanthropic  but  modest  persons  who  do 
not  wish  their  names  known,  dispersing  his  assistance 
over  the  city  to  avoid  suggestive  comparisons." 

New  names  were  considered,  and  several  were  re- 
jected, lacking  the  high  reliability  of  character  neces- 
sary to  sustain  an  arduous  mission.  Against  the 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  3 

emergency  of  general  exposure  from  a  member  prov- 
ing untrustworthy,  it  was  resolved  to  develop  the  so- 
ciety in  separate  and  wholly  independent  groups  of 
ten,  the  four  original  organizers,  only,  being  author- 
ized to  initiate  groups,  and  they  alone  knowing  the 
entire  membership.  For  the  rest,  each  one's  knowl- 
edge was  to  be  limited  to  his  own  group.  Should  a 
member  be  false,  his  testimony  could  at  worst  convict 
his  nine 'associates  only,  and  the  progress  of  the  society 
would  not  be  impaired.  Each  section  was  to  have  its 
own  distributor. 

"  If  a  group  and  its  processes  are  discovered,"  said 
one,  "other  groups  are  endangered,  for  detectives  will 
scent  out  recipients  of  aid  and  snare  those  who  furnish 
it." 

"And  if  an  agent  was  discovered,  what  then  ?  We 
may  be  sure  he  would  never  betray  his  comrades. 
But  we  can  trust  them  to  baffle  detection  :  they  can 
disguise  themselves,  or  invent  a  visit  and  leave  money 
unnoticed;  a  child  met  outside  the  door  will  never  re- 
fuse to  carry  a  package  to  its  parents ;  and  there  is 
the  mail,  too,  which  would  hardly  suspect  a  common 
brown  parcel  of  containing  crisp  bills  ;  and  if  these 
strategies  wear  threadbare,  think  of  the  hundreds  of 
stores  anxious  to  sell  a  yard  of  cloth  and  deliver  it, 
and  quite  obliging  enough  to  wrap  in  another  thing  or 
two  if  you  please.  That  part  is  easy  enough.  f  A 
shrewd  distributor  is  quite  out  of  reach  of  discovery." 

So  answered  another  to  this  seeming  obstacle. 

To  comprehend  the  beneficent  successes  of  these 
self-abegnating  men,  we  must  follow  their  agent  in  his 
novel  excursions.  In  many  disguises  he  learned  the 


4  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

true  conditian  of  scores  of  poor  families.  He  adopted 
a  special  character  for  each  district.  Being  a  physi- 
cian, he  appeared,  in  one  quarter  of  the  city  in  this 
guise  ;  in  another  he  was  an  authorized  sanitary  in- 
spector ;  to  a  third  he  went  as  a  student  investigating  ; 
to  another  as  an  advising  clergyman ;  and  one  locality 
knew  him  as  a  statistician  for  the  labor  union  to  which 
he  belonged.  The  sums  that  he  disposed  of  in  a  sec- 
tion were  not  large  enough  to  arouse  comment.  He 
found  many  families  falling  behind  in  rent,  through 
the  sickness  of  their  breadwinners,  with  the  gray 
prospect  near  of  being  forced  to  surrender  bad  quar- 
ters for  worse  ones,  and  he  banished  that  evil  phan- 
tom. There  were  wtdows  in  almost  every  tenement, 
who  left  their  colorless  children  daily  to  wear  out  their 
fragile  strength  in  factories  for  the  comfort  of  their 
landlords, .  and  to  buy  off  death  from  the  immediate 
execution  of  their  infants  by  the  sufferings  of  miser- 
able maturity.  They  were  conveyed  to  country  towns, 
housed  there  and  clothed,  and  a  year's  rent  paid  for 
them.  The  number  of  half-clad  children  for  whom 
he  provided  warm  flannels  would  not  be  credited  by 
the  fabulously  righteous  slummers  and  charity  super- 
visors ;  and  where  there  were  persons  whose  miniature 
wages  declined  to  pay  for  a  nourishing  dinner  once  a 
week,  he  contrived  to  astonish  them  with  immaculate 
sections  of  beef  on  days  that  were  not  holidays. 

Let  not  the  generous  reader  imagine  that  this  rising 
and  energetic  providence  fed  all  the  needy  people  ;  a 
galaxy  of  unretired  providences,  giving  their  atten- 
tion to  business,  was  requisite  for  that,  and  it  came  in 
good  time. 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  5 

For  it  was  not  many  years  before  there  were  branches 
of  this  beneficent  institution  in  every  prominent  city 
of  the  North,  West,  East  and  South,  Chicago  lead- 
ing, as  in  all  good  things,  with  a  full  hundred ;  and 
the  groups  began  to  specialize  their  undertakings, 
some  of  them  being  fond  of  presenting  the  tenement 
artisans  with  snug  farms  in  the  west  and  seeing  their 
pioteges  safely  settled  there,  protected  from  the  pirat- 
ing land-speculators  of  that  fringe  of  paradise,  and 
their  intriguing  colleagues  in  the  banks. 

But  nothing  told  so  powerfully  and  swiftly  for  the 
amelioration  of  the  laboring  millions  as  the  gold  which 
certain  far-sighted  groups  knew  ho.w  to  pour  into  the 
treasuries  of  strikers  ;  and  from  that  date  an  astonish- 
ing success  began  to  crown  the  participators  in  labor 
wars.  This  invention  in  the  mechanics  of  social  pro- 
gress rose  to  its  legitimate  importance  through  the 
signal  victory  it  enabled  workingnien  to  win  over  one 
Carnegie,  now  forgotten,  but  at  that  period  of  his  life 
a  famous  exploiter  of  labor  and  legislation.  This  am- 
bitions person,  who  sought  distinction  as  a  patron  sim- 
ultaneously of  statesmen,  starvelings  and  an  envious 
rout  of  middle-minded  people,  cut  from  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  pattern,  whose  genius  lay  in  unsuccessfully 
wishing  to  exploit  contemporary  mankind  of  millions 
and  loyally  supporting  those  who  successfully  exploit- 
ed them.  This  individual,  blessed  with  an  environ- 
ment of  propitious  clay  and  the  courage  of  his  instinct 
that  thousands  were  born  to  minister  to  his  gayety  and 
aggrandizement,  determined,  as  Napoleon  once  detei- 
mined  to  shatter  Russia,  to  crush  the  labor  organiza- 
tions out  of  his  pathway  to  democratic  fraternity  and 


6  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

sovereignty  ;  for  he  knew  that  if  these  thorny  impedi- 
ments in  the  mills  which  he  was  fond  of  considering  his 
own  were  brushed  aside,  he  could  manage  the  vulgar 
rabble  of  wage-earners  to  his  heart's  desire,  and  gain- 
ing ever  more  wealth  from  their  unwilling  contribu- 
tions, and  buying  ever  more  honor  and  grandeur  from 
the  world's  grocery  where  these  nourishing  articles 
are  sold,  and  disbursing  his  eminent  talents  and  profits 
so  far  as  business  allowed,  he  would  at  length  grow  to 
the  size  of  the  gods  and  live  in  men's  memories  with 
Jesus  and  Plato  and  Gould.  To  enjoy  the  virtuous 
consciousness  of  well-earned  wealth  and  philosophic 
freedom  from  the  physical  evils  besetting  the  course 
of  one  who  heroically  destroys  the  aspirations  of  ham- 
lets of  human  beings,  whose  poetry  is  the  blast  fur- 
nace and  whose  philosophic  excursions  are  the  peri- 
patetic synthesis  of  broiling  iron,  he  betook  himself  to 
a  fair  castle  in  distant  Scotland — a  house  not  made 
with  his  own  hands,  but  bought  with  the  labor  of  his 
hands  at  Homestead,  whom  now,  teeming  with  thank- 
ful devices,  he  was  pondering  keen-edged  thoughts  to 
degrade. 

It  was  just  at  this  moment  that  certain  ethical 
groups,  pursuing  rectitude,  became  awake  to  their 
opportunity  and  began  to  contribute  to  the  strikers' 
support.  All  non-union  men  who,  being  out  of  work, 
came  to  fill  the  places  of  the  old  hands,  were  enrolled 
upon  the  pay  list  of  the  others  and  refused  to  go  to 
work.  The  aid  which  was  given  sufficed  to  keep  the 
strikers  from  want,  and  perceiving  that  some  power- 
ful popular  sentiment  was  back  of  them,  they  contin- 
ued firm  in  their  formerly  unequal  struggle  with 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  7 

sceptred  capital.  It  was  the  turning  point  of  that 
struggle,  for  the  most  swollen  potentates  of  finance 
could  not  survive  the  losses  which  Carnegie  suffered 
for  a  protracted  period.  When  at  length  he  yielded, 
to  avoid  ruin,  the  men  were  not  content  to  resume 
their  posts  with  trifling  concessions  in  wages  and 
acknowledgement  of  the  right  to  combine.  Their 
compulsory  idleness  has  educated  them,  and  under- 
standing for  the  first  time  their  power,  they  nego- 
tiated a  partnership  with  their  previous  master.  The 
influence  of  this  Waterloo  to  a  shining  knight  of  cap- 
ital upon  the  country,  was  like  the  dazzling  rise  of  a 
competing  sun  in  the  horizon. 

Strikers  in  other  places  were  not  neglected,  and  the 
proportion  of  successful  strikes  rapidly  swelled.  It 
broke  upon  the  esoteric'  inkiness  of  the  employers' 
brain  that  strikes  were  stunning  their  trade  and 
almost  uniformly  succeeding,  and  they  grew  very 
chary  of  putting  the  vitals  of  the  cumbersome  beast, 
capital,  under  the  club  of  the  executioner;  wherefore, 
strikes  decreased  with  acceleration,  the  employers 
preferring  reasonable  concessions  to  their  own  eco- 
nomic extinction.  These  concessions  in  turn  pro- 
duced a  notable  improvement  in  the  condition  and 
character  of  the  employes.  Seeing  the  unmistakable 
success  of  the  labor  organizations,  workmen  who  had 
refused  to  join  in  earlier  days,  shrinking  from  the  dis- 
pleasure of  their  all-potent  employing  dictators,  ral- 
lied to  the  unions,  augmenting  still  further  their 
vitality  and  beneficence.  The  capitalists  sadly  saw 
that  when  the  unions  composed  themselves  for  a 
strike,  they  were  predestined  to  win,  and  they  shaped 


8  A   I^KAGUK   OF  JUSTICE. 


their  shriveling  course  accordingly.  On  their  part, 
rejoicing  in  their  April  potency,  and  recognizing  the 
immense  physical  and  moral  dividends  of  each  mate- 
rial increment  to  their  class,  the  unions  began  to  pre- 
pare themselves  for  more  considerable  alleviations 
touching  social  and  material  equality. 


CHAPTER  II. 

BRAINS   AND    CAPITALISTS   FALL   OUT. 


In  the  meantime,  production  itself  was  feeling  a 
change.  Demand,  for  the  necessaries  of  life  had 
grown  with  the  grown  incomes  of  the  poor,  and 
employment  for  a  fresh  army  corps  of  working  peo- 
ple sprang  up  in  these  industries.  Demand  for 
luxuries  had  declined,  but  not  in  proportion  to  the 
increased  demands  for  comforts  and  necessaries,  and 
the  volume  of  business  as  a  whole  was  greater  by  far 
than  ever  before.  Capitalists  had  discovered  a  shrink- 
age in  their  incomes,  and  not  being  able  to  account 
for  it  in  any  other  way,  had  supposed  it  was  because 
the  industrial  share  of  labor  had  increased.  The 
wise  had  curtailed  their  superfluity  expenses  and 
were  healthier  and  happier  ;  the  foolish,  not  being 
able  to  curtail,  failed,  and  their  business  passed  to  the 
hands  of  men  with  less  regal  sentiments  of  their  own 
deserts  and  new  ideas  about  the  proportion  labor 
merits.  The  wisest  -of  all,  finding  society  so  much 
more  wholesome  since  the  workers  began  to  advance, 
came  out  boldly  as  labor  champions  and  made  their 
factories  co-operative. 

Nevertheless,  despite  the  large  deductions  which 
the  members  of  the  League  of  Justice  were  making 
from  the  gross  "earnings"  of  the  capitalists,  their 
net  incomes  fell  off  in  no  very  marked  manner,  for  the 
productive  capacity  and  quality  of  the  working  popu- 


10  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

lation  rose  so  steadily,  in  consequence  of  their  better 
material  state,  that  they  rendered  to  the  employers  in 
return  for  wages,  a  larger  product  than  ever  before. 
This  tended  to  reconcile  the  masters  to  the  laborers' 
daily  enlarging  demands.  And,  moreover,  if  some 
capital  had  been  withdrawn  from  the  manufacture  o{ 
luxuries,  still  more  having  been  invested  in  the  manu- 
facture of  necessaries  and  comforts,  capital  enjoyed 
satisfying  returns  from  this. 

The  entire  bulk  of  capital  was  swelled  in  anothei 
way  undreamed  of  by  the  worthy  wealthies  of  previ- 
ous times.  It  had  been  a  principle  entirely  undis- 
puted by  pi  elates,  professors  and  practical  men,  that 
the  cause  of  the  poverty  of  the  poor  was  their  heedless 
and  immense  expenditures  upon  frivolities  and  vices, 
men  receiving  a  dollar  a  day  to  nurture  a  family  with 
being  supposed  to  spend  four  or  five  dollars  of  that 
sum  daily  for  beer  and  brawling,  and  the  capitalists 
suffered  so  terribly  from  this  enormous  waste  that 
they  feared  all  the  factories  and  savings  of  the  coun- 
try would  be  drunk  up  and  production  would  cease 
because  the  capital  was  gone,  unless  they  cut  down 
the  wages  of  the  workers  still  more  and  applied  the 
saved  surplus  to  their  own  scant  domestic  outlays  and 
recuperative  investments  in  private  wines  and  dia- 
monds for  the  preservation  of  "capital.  Now  it  was 
ascertained,  to  the  confusion  of  all  the  good  and  thrift}7, 
that  so  soon  as  the  working  people  found  themselves 
in  fair  health  and  comfort  with  their  better  food  and 
homes,  they  began  to  save,  and  had  the  good  lords  of 
earth,  the  prelates  of  heaven,  and  the  professors  of 
both,  not  been  retarded  in  speaking  by  the  emerald 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  II 

scum  of  jealousy  rising  in  their  throats,  they  would 
have  admitted  that  a  good  lump  of  the  savings,  so- 
called,  which  the  rich  had  squandered  .  in  fruitless 
famous  extravagances,  became  now  an  accumulation 
among  the  workers,  actually  saved  for  the  enhance- 
ment of  production.  And  ownership  being  distri- 
buted among  many,  multiplied  the  benefits  which  it 
bestowed. 

Their  new  intelligence  enabled  them  to  shake  the 
citadel  of  the  middle-man  and  the  sweating  boss-con- 
tractor, for  they  found  that  they  themselves  could 
take  group  contracts  as  in  Australia,  instead  of  letting 
some  ravenous  overseer  exploit  them  as  hired  work- 
ers. And  it  soon  came  about  that  they  could  obtain 
any  contract  for  which  they  applied,  since  their  supe- 
rior ability  and  the  excellence  and  reliability  of  their 
work  rendered  all  they  did  more  profitable  to  employ- 
ers than  the  slipshod  profligate  constructions  of  con- 
tractors. They  could  underbid  if  they  wished,  saving 
from  the  contractor's  plutonic  profits  and  stealings. 

They  began  to  invest  their  savings  in  manufac- 
tories of  their  own,  which  they  conducted  without 
sharing  the  profits  with  any  idle  club  of  capitalists, 
stock-holders,  or  managers,  with  sky-reaching  salar- 
ies. Such  enterprises  grew  apace,  for  they  could 
undersell  the  manufactories  which  had  the  terrible 
corporation  of  .capitalists  and  '  managers '  on  their 
backs.  Formerly  the  capitalists  had  all  things  their 
own  way,  because  they  could  buy  every  workingman 
of  executive  ability  out  of  his  class  and  make  him  a 
salaried  manager  for  their  own  benefit  and  his,  while 
they  capered  about  the  continent  and  planet.  But  at 


12  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

this  period  a  sentiment  akin  to  patriotism  made  its 
appearance  in  the  breast  of  labor.  They  began  to 
love  their  cause  and  to  be  loyal  to  their  fellow-labor- 
ers ;  there  were  some  who  declined  to  manage  for  the 
traveling  capitalists.  The  owners  were  stupefied  by 
this  innovation.  Was  it  possible  that  anyone  existed 
who  would  not  sell  himself  for  money,  especially  low- 
born workingmen  ?  Was  it  conceivable  that  they 
must  now  manage  their  shops  themselves,  they  who 
knew  nothing  whatever  about  shops  or  work,  who 
were  born  for  junketing  and  joy  ? 

Some  of  the  best  managers  replied  to  these  lament- 
ations and  entreaties  that  they  would  assume  the  con- 
duct of  affairs  if  the  workmen  were  taken  into  partner- 
ship, while  if  not,  they  would  organize  partnership 
shops  independently. 

"We  always  thought  brains  were  with  us,"  wailed 
a  capitalist,  weeping  tears  of  blood —  "not  our  brains, 
god  forbid  !  but  working-class  brains,  which  saved 
us  the  necessity  of  having  any,  which  we  could  buy, 
—  and  we  have  made  the  world  ring  with  our  prog- 
nosticating hosannas  that  brains  would  eternally  come 
to  the  top,  to  us.  We  thought  ourselves  safe  from 
co-operative  aggression  because  the  people's  managers 
rushed  to  us  like  insects  to  a  lamp.  Oh,  wroe !  Fidel- 
ity is  dead !  Brains  desert  the  hand  that  has  let  its- 
self  be  fed  by  them  !  ' ' 

' '  Hold  !  ' '  said  a  manager  ;  ' '  the  hand  that  let  us 
feed  it  and  ourselves  that  it  might  use  us  to  take  the 
food  out  of  the  mouths  of  our  comrades.  If  we  chose 
to  continue  the  gormands  your  system  has  made  us, 
we  might  receive  the  same  salaries  as  now,  and 


A  LEAGUE  OF  JUSTICE.  13 

among  the  workers  might  be  distributed  your  envia- 
ble portion.  We  should  be  as  well  off,  the  workers 
far  better,  and  you  who  earn  and  deserve  nothing, 
would  receive  your  share — nothing.  But  we  man- 
agers do  not  intend  to  remain  gormands." 

So  the  partnership  enterprises  grew,  taking  in  the 
people  who  were  thrown  out  by  the  failure  of  capital- 
ist competitors,  letting  those  who  had  not  money  to 
buy  stock  earn  it  by  their  labor,  over  and  above  the 
good  support  which  they  earned. 

These  successful  partnerships  had  their  inevitable 
effect  on  the  old-style  capitalist  employers.  They  saw 
the  field  of  production  which  they  had  owned  entirely, 
and  cropped  for  themselves  during  an  indefinite  past, 
slipping  from  their  control.  It  was  not,  however,  the 
capitalist  who  had  always  been  saying,  "we  should 
like  to  make  things  better  if  we  could,  but  we  see  no 
way,"  who  followed  first  in  the  line  the  working  peo- 
ple were  going. 

In  consequence  of  their  increasing  property,  the 
workers  now  began  to  have  a  voice  in  judicial  decis- 
ions and  legislation.  A  judge  was  offered  a  special 
train  by  a  great  railway  corporation  to  go  and  sit  judi- 
cially on  one  of  their  cases,  but  he  refused  it. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE    GOOD    DEEDS   OF   SOME    CURTAILED. 

Of  course,  long  before  this,  discovery  of  what  was 
called  embezzlement  in  divers  business  houses  had 
taken  place,  and  the  defaulting  clerks  had  been  sen- 
tenced to  various  terms  of  hard  labor  in  the  peniten- 
tial ies.  They  did  not  find  the  labor  any  harder  than 
they  had  been  accustomed  to,  however,  and  all  of  them 
began  to  improve  in  health  and  spirits  from  the  physi- 
cal exercise  they  were  now  enabled  to  enjoy.  Their 
minds  were  free  from  care  and  they  felt  that  they  were 
having  a  vacation  of  life  after  the  long  hours  and  years  of 
dungeon  counting-house  death.  Some  of  them  knew 
the  little  story  of  Maupassant's,  of  the  old  clerk  who 
one  day  went  out  into  the  sunlight  and  discovered 
life,  and  hanged  himself  from  the  mortal  sorrow  he 
felt  that  the  years  had  gone,  and  all  the  joy  of  the 
world  had  gone,  and  never  had  or  could  come  to  him. 
But  these  disgraced  clerks  felt  no  inclination  to  hang 
themselves.  They  knew  that  they  had  been  great 
world -forces,  and  thej^  watched  with  glad,  half-  real- 
ized hope,  the  mighty  work  which  their  sacrifices  \vere 
sustaining,  and  their  comrades  found  ways  to  keep 
them  informed  of  the  progress  going  on  outside. 

They  did  not  need  to  concern  themselves  for  their 
families,  for  the  League  attended  to  the  support  of 
such  as  had  been  able  to  save  nothing  from  the  meagre 
earnings  of  their  bread-winner.  But  none  of  the  em- 


A  LEAGUE  OF  JUSTICE.  15 

ployers*  funds  were  used  for  this  purpose.  The  com- 
rades met  such  expenses  from  their  own  purses.  The 
wives  of  the  criminals  were  assuaged  of  their  grief  and 
chagrin  by  admission  into  the  confidence  of  the 
League,  and  they  felt  proud  of  the  courageous  men 

had  done  these  things,  and  happy  in  the  social 
degradation  they  endured. 

The  employers  who  brought  these  clerical  appro- 
priations to  light,  and  their  learned  legal  crutches, 
were  painfully  puzzled  to  trace  the  squanderings  of 
the  departed  funds.  Families  of  monastic  frugality 
in  walk  and  conversation  with  their  neighbors  must 
have  been  indeed  clever  rogues  in  spending  never  to 
show  a  trace  of  it.  It  was  surmised  that  the  pecula- 
tors had  also  been  speculators,  and  some  solved  the 
mystery  by  polygamic  visions  of  various  subsidiary 
families  who  now  would  come  to  want.  The  capital- 
ists who  lost  most,  denounced  the  robbers  as  atheists, 
and  to  make  good  the  losses  suffered,  they  increased 
their  customary  stipends  to  the  judges. 

The  repeated  recurrence  of  this  total  disappearance 
of  the  stolen  moneys  finally  started  one  hyper-shrewd 
fellow  thinking,  and  made  him  divine  the  existence  of 
a  secret  embezzling  philanthropic  association  of  clerks. 
He  called  a  conclave  of  suffering  capitalists  and  im- 
parted his  discovery,  expecting  to  be  richly  rewarded. 
He  was  astonished  and  mortified  beyond  recovery 
when  they  assailed  him  with  derision.  They  said  it 

contrary  to  human  nature  as  well  as  preposter- 
ously impossible  to  think  that  any  man  who  could 
steal  for  himself  would  steal  for  the  benefit  of  anybody 
else.  They  could  speak  from  experience,  which,  tike 


1 6  A   I.EAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

religious  experience,  could  never  be  refuted.  The 
capitalists  had  never  been  strained  so  to  comprehend 
anything,  and  under  the  tension  the  meeting  came 
near  ending  in  a  riot.  The  shrewd  man  went  away 
feeling  like  Judas,  but  without  the  silver. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

ORGANIZING. 

In  spite  of  these  occasional  digressions,  the  society 
went  on  its  way  augmenting.  The  membership 
reached  thirty  thousand.  Many  were  clerks,  many 
were  people  with  moderate  private  incomes  who  de- 
voted their  entire  time  to  the  diversified  works  of  the 
society.  Every  member  pledged  himself  to  the  strict- 
est economy  in  living,  and  to  give  all  he  could  save  to 
the  social  object.  Spartan  simplicity  and  primitive 
Christian  devotion  characterized  all. 

The  form  of  organization  underwent  sundry  adapta- 
tions to  the  exigencies  of  growth  and  the  ever  more 
complicated  labors  assumed.  Each  city  had  its  chief 
organizer,  selected  in  every  instance  by  the  executive 
committee  of  the  league,  its  four  founders,  and  these 
chiefs  chose  organizers  for  each  particular  group.  Se- 
crecy pervaded  like  the  ether.  Only  the  high  chief 
knew  the  members  in  his  city ;  the  group  chiefs  knew 
only  those  of  their  group ;  the  members  of  a  group  knew 
only  one  another.  The  city  chief  passed  finally  upon 
every  candidate  proposed  for  admission.  He  also  kept 
a  chart  of  the  group  enterprises  to  save  them  from 
crossing  in  action. 

To  each  high  chief  the  under  chiefs  reported  the 
application  of  their  funds,  and  the  economic  and  moral 
proceeds  of  their  disbursement  as  far  as  they  came  in- 
to the  exchequer  of  observation.  These  reports  found 


1 8  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

their  way  to  the  central  executive  committee  of  the  in- 
augurating four,  who  arranged,  condensed  and  articu- 
lated them,  in  so  doing  preparing  the  intestinal  social 
history  of  the  period. 

The  original  four  still  followed  the  arduous  duties 
of  their  clerkship,  not  deeming  it  expedient  to  resign, 
because  they  were  among  the  most  brilliant  abstrac- 
tors. But  the  weighty  work  of  conducting  the  great 
league  was  heavy  upon  them,  for  some  of  the  larger 
projects,  requiring  general  assistance,  had  to  be  cen- 
trally conducted  by  them.  Therefore  several  secreta- 
ries, chosen  with  reference  to  their  .stanch  honor,  were 
trained  for  the  service,  and  the  private  earnings  of 
their  associates  preserved  them  from  want. 


CHAPTER  V. 

A   FREE   NEWSPAPER. 

When  this  degree  of  perfection  was  reached,  it  was 
determined  to  take  up  the  work  of  popular  instruction. 
It  was  begun  with  the  newspaper.  The  poorer  peo- 
ple of  the  country,  needing  instruction  nearly  as  much 
as  the  rich,  were  unable  to  subscribe  for  enlightening 
literature,  and  had  nothing  to  read.  There  were  also 
people  of  the  other  classes,  in  handsome  numbers, 
who  never  read  anything,  and  therefore  did  not  know 
anything  progressive,  taking  only  the  literary  emana- 
tions from  capital.  The  reform  journal  was  there- 
fore made  like  the  starlight,  free.  Any  one  could 
send  his  own  name  and  the  names  of  all  his  friends 
and  enemies,  if  he  wished  to  enlighten  them,  and  all 
from  that  day  received  the  publication  without  price. 
The  public  was  invited  to  meet  the  expenses  of  the 
sheet  by  contributions,  and  what  failed  after  that  was 
supplied  by  the  league  of  embezzlers. 

The  plan  proved  an  unspeakable  achievement,  and 
the  subscribers'  list  mounted  to  a  million  the  first 
month.  Applications  flooded  in  from  every  European 
country,  and  editions  were  prepared  in  each  leading 
language.  The  edition,  first  monthly,  was  made 
weekly,  then  came  a  daily,  afterward  a  review,  as  well 
as  frequent  books  issued  gratis.  Having  great  wealth 
behind  it  and  no  fear  within  it,  the  journal  soon  pos- 
sessed the  ear  of  the  whole  civilized  world,  being  ter- 


20  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

rifically  reliable  and  reliably  terrific  at  the  same  time. 
The  other  newspapers,  appropriately  called  by  one  in 
those  times  the  'daily  sewers,'  saw  their  subscription 
lists  shivered,  and  could  not  mend  their  fortunes  even 
after  curtailing  their  emission  of  garbage. 

The  mighty  reform  press  was  a  veritable  treasury 
of  the  keenest  thought  and  fact,  for  now  that  rhere 
was  money  on  the  side  of  progress,  the  best  thinkers 
changed  their  opinions  very  rapidly.  Books  and 
chapters  and  pamphlets  of  germinant  energy  were 
sown  from  this  press  among  the  people  like  wheat. 

In  less  than  a  year  the  masses  began  to  comprehend 
the  meaning  of  those  whom  they  had  previously  seen 
reviled  as  agitators  and  demagogues,  and  when  they 
understood  them  they  recognized  that  these  monsters 
were  the  only  wise  people,  and  were  right  in  saying 
that  a  change  in  the  social  order  amounting  to  an 
absolute  revolution  was  the  only  way  to  life.  Many 
of  the  rich  caught  glimpses  of  the  corners  of  this  fact 
during  dyspeptic  retributions,  but  took  more  wine  and 
said,  "  after  us  the  deluge." 

It  soured  the  capitalists  when  they  found  themselves 
obliged  to  have  the  keen  reform  newspaper  on  their 
tables  or  never  to  know  any  news,  for  the  superceded 
prevaricators  of  former  days  had  been  obliged  by 
poverty  to  whittle  down  their  staff  of  news-gatherers, 
and  most  of  them  had  grown  so  sleepy  that  their 
buildings  were  used  for  cheap  lodging  houses.  Thus 
the  children  of  the  capitalists  were  moulded  little  by 
little  on  the  reform  pattern,  and  the  capitalists,  seeing 
their  own  flesh  and  blood  turning  against  them,  felt 
as  if  they  belonged  to  an  extinct  age  and  race. 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  21 

Psychologists  and  historians  of  the  new  school  fre- 
quently came  to  intereiew  them  to  study  their  surviv- 
ing mental  processes  for  learned  antiquarian  treatises. 
The  great  lying,  gossiping,  scandaling,  advertising, 
sycophant,  commercial,  capital-serving  sheets,  went 
about  now  only  as  ghosts,  through  which  their  bones 
could  be  seen.  Their  absorber  printed  no  advertise- 
ments for  pay,  its  mission  being  to  advertise  the 
truth.  Deceitful  puffs  of  quack  objects,  vegetable, 
human  and  mineral,  collapsed  like  a  punctured  bal- 
loon, having  no  bellows  to  inflate  them.  But  in  the 
League  Journal  appeared  lists  of  all  the  new  co-opera- 
tive establishments,  whether  factories  or  stores,  and 
the  working  people  were  advised  to  buy  of  these  only, 
since  their  patronage  would  solidify  such  industries 
and  compel  others  to  follow  their  example.  Agents 
of  the  capitalist  producers  offered  fabulous  bribes  to 
be  admitted  to  these  lists,  but  as  the  editors  were 
neither  a  legislative  body  nor  traffickers  in  political, 
religious,  moral,  social,  or  literary  opinions,  the 
metallic  persuasion  had  no  gravitation  in  their  scales. 
In  the  second  year  every  city  came  to  have  a  branch 
journal  of  its  own,  whose  weekly  issue  penetrated 
each  glade  and  glen  of  agriculture,  tapping  the  trade 
of  capitalists  on  that  side. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

LAWYERS   NO   MORE. 

A  literary  innovation  in  this  journal  which  speedily 
assumed  consequence  was  the  Department  of  Injus- 
tice. All  cases  where  the  weak  had  been  wronged  by 
the  powerful,  working  people  by  their  employers,  the 
poor  by  the  rich,  were  impartially  examined,  and  if 
the  charge  proved  true,  the  facfls  and  the  names  of  the 
oppressors  were  published.  This  let  the  offender 
down  farther  in  public  estimation  and  caused  him 
more  financial  panic  than  a  successful  lawsuit  at  his 
heels  would  have  done,  and  the  poor  and  weak  who 
never  had  seen  an  ounce  of  justice  before,  nor  even 
known  the  color  of  the  stuff,  nor  had  the  ghostliest 
chance  of  protection  in  the  courts,  now  found  redress 
easy,  swift,  telescope-aimed  and  costless. 

This  new  engine  of  virtue  spread  contagious  terror 
through  the  virtue-proof  souls  of  those  who  had 
always  made  laws  and  enjoyed  enameled  immunity 
from  them.  Several  such  concocted  mad  slander 
suits  against  the  journal,  but  the  land-slide  of  evidence 
which  the  publishers  had,  compelled  the  capitalists 
and  judges  to  flee  from  the  case  to  come  for  their  very 
lives.  The  infliction  of  wrong  grew  to  be  a  precari- 
ous thing  for  the  inflicter,  and  evil  encroachments 
slunk  away  from  the  regions  where  this  magical 
defender  came.  Publication  was  so  prostrating  to 
the  delinquent  that  a  mere  private  editorial  notice  to 
correct  the  wrong  led  to  restitution. 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  23 

Here  is  a  case  selected  at  random  from  the  files.- 
Three  men  whose  families  relied  upon  the  wages  of  each 
day  for  bread,  were  hired  by  two  wealthy  land-owners 
to  dig  a  well.  The  owners  agreed  to  have  bricks  there 
for  the  walls  at  the  proper  time.  The  men  cautioned 
them  that  the  earth  might  cave  if  this  were  neglected . 
'Go  on  digging,'  said  the  owners,  'the  bricks  shall  be 
there.'  They  dug  as  instructed,  the  bricks  came  not 
as  promised,  the  sides  fell  in  as  predicted.  It  was 
Saturday  night,  they  had  dug  two  days,  they  asked 
for  two  days'  pay.  Said  the  canny  owners,  'The  well 
is  not  dug,  and  we  cannot  pay  for  its  digging  twice. 
When  you  clear  out  the  hole  again  we  will  pay  you 
the  promised  sum.'  The  men,  fasted  that  Sunday. 
They  were  workers  of  the  lowest  class  and  had  no  social 
'pull.'  The  owners  pulled  the  Sunday-school,  the 
church  and  the  community,  with  piety  and  money. 
But  they  received  a  note  from  the  editorial  Department 
of  Injustice  a  few  days  after,  and  as  nothing  had  yet 
been  discovered  which  would  pull  that,  the  debt  was 
settled  the  same  day. 

People  of  all  classes  soon  saw  what  an  unerring 
path  to  justice  this  department  opened,  and  gradually 
they  deserted  the  tedious,  trickish,  costly,  squirming, 
capitalized  courts  of  law.  If  the  defrauders  did  not 
recompense  their  victims,  the  notified  public  dreaded 
to  deal  with  them,  and  they  found  themselves  in  com- 
mercial Coventry.  To  avoid  the  expensive  loss  of 
business  and  personal  confidence,  the  dishonorable 
were  often  animated  to  reparation  by  a  laconic  notice 
from  the  Department  of  Injustice  that  their  rise  was  to 
be  inspected.  Thus  while  the  volume  of  justice  in- 


24  A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

creased,  the  labor  required  to  earn  it  decreased.  No 
case  ever  arose  where  the  impartiality  of  the  depart- 
ment was  questioned,  since  they  had  neither  fees  nor 
salaries  nor  railroad  passes,  nor  any  personal  stake  in 
the  decisions. 

Reason  and  equity  decided  the  disputes  and  techni- 
cal figments,  which  in  the  hands  of  bar  and  bench 
'  experts'  always  proved  broad  passages  for  Injustice 
standing  ere<5l  to  come  in  at  and  take  possession,  were 
barred  up  to  be  kept  for  specimen  judgment-day  testi- 
mony. It  never  took  much  time  to  settle  claims  on 
rational  grounds,  and  the  department  was  therefore 
never  belated  in  its  business.  It  protected  itself  and 
its  clients  from  those  who  would  knowingly  prefer 
unjust  charges,  for  those  who  were  found  guilty  of 
this  wrong,  from  malice  or  hope  of  gain,  were  them- 
selves published  in  place  of  their  intended  prey.  So 
only  those  who  believed  in  their  causes  brought  them, 
and  those  who  had  mistaken  their  claims  were  en- 
lightened by  the  editors,  and  their  minds  being  re- 
stored to  equilibrium,  and  a  cankering  lawsuit  of  for- 
mer days  being  averted,  they  adjusted  their  quarrel  in- 
telligently, and  continued  to  enjoy  life.  On  this  side 
of  its  work  the  Editorial  Board  of  Justice  finally  be- 
came a  chamber  of  arbitration. 

Naturally  all  this  was  a  terrific  catastrophe  to  the 
legal  profession.  Lawyers  starved  until  they  were 
obliged  to  work  at  something  useful,  and  as  some  of 
them  would  not  do  this,  they  starved  to  death.  Judges 
had  nothing  to  do,  and  little  by  little  nine-tenths  of 
them  were  discharged.  It  was  noticed  that  many  of 
them  became  motor  men  on  the  street  cars  where  their 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  25 

.  ermine  was  useful,  or  railroad  ticket  sellers  where  their 
majesty  lost  none  of  its  frown  or  shine. 

People  now  spoke  their  minds  and  said  what  they 
had  previously  thought,  that  the  law  was  the  most 
disreputable  profession  on  the  list  after  that  of  the 
hangman,  and  now  they  placed  it  ahead  of  the 
hangman's  in  vileness,  because  no  one  brought  any 
cases  to  the  lawyers  which  had  the  dimmest  right  in 
them,  but  only  those  which  could  be  shored  up  by 
right-defying  technical  rascalities,  calumniations,  and 
the  consecrated  process  of  methodical  lawful  frauds. 

The  f etchers  of  these  cases  were  low  persons,  devoid 
of  the  cranial  elements  of  honor,  and  the  attorneys 
susceptible  to  the  blandishments  of  such  simian 
scoundrels  were  obviously  of  the  same  family.  The 
lawyer  class  was,  therefore,  as  much  despised  by  all 
as  the  prostitute  class  was  by  the  women,  and  with 
more  reason.  The  judges,  of  course,  fared  no  better  in 
public  esteem,  for  every  one  saw  that  the  lying  tech- 
nalists  at  the  bar  would  have  no  chance  if  the  judges 
did  not  abet  them  in  their  conspiracies  to  assassinate 
right  by  listening  to  their  iniquitous  verbal  meta- 
physics. Moreover,  if  the  brainless  judges  thought  it 
their  conscienceless  duty  to  dip  out  what  they  labeled 
justice  from  the  refuse  of  blinding,  complicated  stat- 
utes and  precedents  long  dead  and  putrified,  why  did 
they  not  move  to  simplify  these  statutes,  filter  and 
boil  the  laws,  and  make  the  metaphysical  legalities 
coincide  with  the  true  and  the  just  ? 

The  lawyers  had  always  had  unlimited  chance  to 
reform  law,  being  not  only  its  familiars  and  spiritual 
mediums,  its  vestals  and  pontiffs,  and,  therefore,  the 


26  A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

chosen  ones  to  simplify  and  justify  it;  but  they  had . 
been  its  manufacturers,  very  law-gods,  out  of  con- 
gressional paradise  sending  their  singing  bolts.  And 
what  had  they  done  with  their  super-terrestrial  oppor- 
tunities but  build  and  dig  a  labyrinth  in  which  to 
mesh  and  mulct  everybody?  No  one  had  the  least 
question  why  they  had  not  been  simplifying  and  dis- 
infecting the  laws  for  centuries  instead  of  making  the 
world  bear  their  abominable  carcass  of  diseases  up  the 
stony  slope  of  time.  L,ike  every  priesthood,  the  legal 
priesthood  wanted  a  theology  it  could  operate  to  the 
eternal  salvation  of  itself  from  usefulness  and  the 
eternal  damnation  of  others  to  the  toils  of  supporting 
its  uselessness. 

Some  of  the  law-moulding  hypocrites  who  were 
left,  now  bethought  them  of  sweeping  away  the  ridic- 
ulous intricacies  through  which  the  people  had  always 
been  gamed,  plotting  thereby  to  bring  back  an  occu- 
pation for  themselves  which  they  could  soon  corrupt. 
They  found  no  difficulty  in  legal  lucidification — alle- 
gorical way-faring  .  men  could  have  done  that ;  but 
when  it  was  accomplished  the  courts  of  law  had  no 
more  cases  of  any  kind,  for  the  rascals  could  gain 
nothing  from  a  code  of  laws  sound  and  sane,  and 
therefore  offered  no  more  sacrifices  to  them,  while 
the  rest  had  no  notion  of  putting  themselves  again 
into  the  jaws  of  the  many-stomached  judicial  devil- 
fish. 

Desperate  at  the  alienation  of  even  the  miscreants, 
the  legal  fog-makers  made  a  final  effort  to  reanimate 
the  defunct  haze  and  fraud;  but  the  revolutionary 
journal  followed  each  machination  with  such  scorch- 


V*F 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.    .  27 


ing  exposure  that  the  judges,  several  of  whom  were 
supreme  bench  fellows,  —  they,  the  unfittest,  having 
survived  longest,  —  became  the  laughing  stock  of 
children  and  everybody,  surrendered  to  the  inevitable, 
and  retired  to  farms  to  recuperate  their  seedy  stock. 
Then  the  courts  were  entirely  empty  and  the  profes- 
sion of  law  became  extinct. 

A  fabulous  saving,  both  governmental  and  private, 
had  all  this  time  been  going  on.  '  What  had  pre- 
viously .supported  the  creaking  machinery  of  law  was 
saved,  and  what  had  been  squandered  upon  lawyers 
by  litigants,  was  rescued  to  them.  The  legal  maggot 
which  had  been  a  fearful  ravager  of  every  limb  of 
industry,  life  and  emotion,  having  its  mouth  every- 
where, and  being  supported  by  the  producers,  was 
now  dead.  It  was  as  if  the  expense  of  the  great 
standing  armies  of  the  world  were  suddenly  removed 
from  the  groaning  people  at  home,  and  all  the  officery 
and  soldiers  of  them  began  to  produce.  All  the  law- 
yers, clerks  and  court  indignitaries  had  actually  to 
do  true  labor.  Production  took  an  incredible  bound, 
while  taxes  fell  out  of  sight. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

EDUCATION,    FOR    THE    FIRST   TIME. 

Nobody  will  suppose  that  all  this  happened  in  a 
week.  Other  things  had  been  going  on  ill  the  mean- 
time. This  great  free  revolutionary  journal  had 
unceasingly  advocated  a  rational  system  of  education 
for  the  young.  After  the  rays  of  the  morning  sun 
tipped  the  east  of  their  minds,  deputations  of  people 
from  the  masses,  the  middle  class,  and  single  individ- 
uals (disguised)  of  the  rich,  were  continually  coming 
to  the  editors  imploring  them  to  give  their  theories 
form  and  flesh  and  establish  actual  education,  if  only 
a  little.  At  length  they  acceded.  They  did  not  hold 
immortal  and  sterile  discussions  ruminating  the  advis- 
ability, non-advisability,  partial  advisability,  and 
impartial  advisability  of  atomic  alterations  in  curric- 
ula, goading  their  prodigious  brains  to  invent  surer 
means  of  enticing  or  compelling  or  narcotizing  the 
youth  to  learn  valueless  things  in  a  suicidal  way,  with 
a  view  to  the  wonderful  eventual  perfecting  of  educa- 
tional enginery  so  as  in  due  passage  of  centuries  to 
have  the  steam  up  for  the  development  of  men  and 
women.  These  revolutionary  educators  jumped  the 
gutter  of  centuries,  being  of  the  mind  that  it  was  as 
weighty  to  save  the  children  of  the  present  as  to  let 
the  race  dwindle  for  the  benefit  of  a  dwindled  poster- 
ity in  some  ultimate  era.  When  people  saw  this  so 
easily  done  —  for  it  was  only  a  matter  of  making  up 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  29 

two  or  three  minds  to  do  it  —  they  were  amazed  and 
wroth  that  the  paid  and  provided  educators  had  not 
done  it  in  their  grandparents'  time. 

They  made  a  clean  sweep  of  whole  continents  of 
educational  rubbish,  like  Latin  and  Greek,  and  when 
called  upon  by  the  kings  and  heirs  apparent  of  these 
extensive  cemeteries,  the  professors,  to  defend  their 
extraordinary  want  of  consideration  for  the  defunct, 
they  replied  by  telling  the  very  original  '  savants ' 
what  they  had  never  thought  of  before,  that  the 
Greeks  became  the  wonderful  people  they  were  with- 
out the  assistance  of  any  language  which  was  dead 
and  buried  Greek  to  them  and  their  time,  to  rub  and 
to  '  sharpen  '  their  faculties  over,  and  saturate  them 
with  conceptions  of  a  long  out-grown  period;  while 
had  they  applied  their  brains  to  such  deadly  routine, 
they  certainly  would  not  have  surpassed  all  other 
races  of  the  world  in  the  splendor  of  their  originations 
on  every  subject  they  touched. 

Their  first  care  of  all,  beginning  long  before  the 
cradle,  was  the  health  of  the  child,  and  this  continued 
to  be  absolutely  and  unflinchingly  first  so  long  as  edu- 
cation had  anything  to  do  with  it.  The  second  unalter- 
able law7  was  that  the  children  should  always  be  happy 
and  never  know  that  they  were  being  educated.  Any- 
thing and  everything  else  might  be  sacrificed,  but 
these  things  under  no  circumstances.  The  days  of 
childhood  are  the  time,  they  said,  when  one  is  mos-t 
attuned  to  the  pleasures  of  life  and  keenest  to  its 
pains.  Childhood  is,  therefore,  the  most  valuable 
and  vital  part  of  life,  and  other  parts  should  be  a 
preparation  for  it  quite  as  much  as  it  for  others.  To 


30  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

look  upon  this  period  as  a  getting  ready  lime  for 
grown-up  years  is,  then,  the  crudest  malpractice ; 
it  is  like  hearing  the  finer  music  first  to  prepare  one- 
self to  enjoy  the  poorer  music  more.  Youth  is 
undoubtedly  the  grandest  time  of  life,  when  the  pow- 
ers are  complete  and  full,  and  yet  youth  is  mostly  sac- 
rificed in  plotting  and  striving  to  get  in  more  joy  later 
on  when  the  aptitude  and  faculty  for  joy  have,  like 
the  clock,  run  down. 

And,  without  any  comparison  of  periods,  each 
period  has  its  own  perfect  rights  if  the  full  sum  total 
of  life  is  to  be  reached.  To-day  is  as  important  as 
to-morrow;  it  must  not  be  scrimped  or  scamped  or 
sacrificed  for  to-morrow.  It  may  be  the  day  of  a  five- 
year  old  child,  or  that  of  a  twenty-five  or  fifty-year 
old  man;  each  is  a  day,  with  all  present  and  past  eter- 
nity, all  possibility  and  reality  crested  in  it.  L,ife, 
when  it  is  a  perfect  art,  will  focus  and  culminate  all 
living  in  each  day,  as  if  it  had  been  that  toward  which 
the  process  and  motive  of  creation  moved. 

The  inaugurat.ion.of  childhood  and  youth  is  the  fair 
ideal,  since,  when  each  day  is  perfect,  there  can  be  no 
regrets  and  no  additions,  save  the  increment  of  a  new 
and  perfecter  day  to-morrow,  born  of  to-day's  com- 
pleteness. 

Meditating  in  this  manner,  these  true  philosophers 
asked  if  a  lesson  which  spoiled  to-day  for  the  apparent 
sake  of  to-morrow,  could  make  good  its  title  to  the 
desolation  of  to  day.  Sir,  to-day  is  gone,  one  gem 
out  of  life's  coronet.  Bring  it  back  to  me,  the  cor- 
onet is  ugly  without  it.  Can  you  not  do  it  ?  Then 
you  have  impiously  wronged  me!  Take  one  tooth 


A   IvEAGUK   OF  JUSTICE.  31 

from  the  fabulous  perfect  row  that  smiles  to  you; 
there  are  two  eyes,  beautiful  in  the  vibrating  light- 
ning of  their  storied  abysses.  One  will  do ;  put  the 
other  or.':  that  it  may  be  more  beautiful.  A  ton  of 
learning  gained  at  the  loss  of  one  ounce  of  health  is  a 
dear  purchase,  did  some  one  say  ?  A  ton  of  learning 
purchased  by  an  ounce  of  sorrow  is  dear.  Sorrow 
is  a  canker.  Don't  imagine  that  when  it  is  gone 
it  is  gone.  It  scars  and  prostrates  and  haunts ; 
it  is  a  mutinous  substance,  unforgiving  perpetu- 
ally. For  the  benefit  of  a  tree's  beautiful  to-mor- 
row scrape  the  bark  off  on  one  side  to-day. 

No,  children  did  not  come  into  the  world  10  learn 
lessons.  The  object  of  childhood  is  not  prepara- 
tion. The  object  of  childhood  is  itself.  How  immor- 
tal the  wisdom  which  beats  the  stars  out  of  a  child's 
firmanent  that  he  may  be  fitted  to  enjoy  the  dead 
stars  when  he  is  a  man  !  Now  for  life !  When  you 
are  a  man  you  may  be  'persecuted  by  thoughts  of 
death  and  separation.  This  generation's  ancestry  has 
been  bad  ;  we  harbor  evil  forebodings  and  itch  with 
the  measles  of  immortality.  Keep  that  venom  out  of 
children's  ears.  Death  will  overtake  him  all  too  soon, 
and  he  can  investigate  his  own  immortality.  Teach 
him  the  wholeness  and  holiness  of  now,  and  discharge 
destiny  of  its  religious  mission  to  worry  him.  L,et 
there  be  a  great  silence  about  Jesus  and  god,  until 
he  discovers  that  he  himself  is  here  in  the  universe 
with  no  secondary  destiny.  He  will  chat  with  the 
universe  then  on  a  fair  footing.  God  is  a  great  dis- 
turber of  the  peace,  intruding  himself  like  a  child  out 


32  A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

of   humor  unless  he  is   noticed.       Did    god  place  us 
here  for  the  pleasure  of  nagging  us  ? 

Similarly  there  was  no  noise  about  the  achievement 
expected  of  the  chi4d,  no  examinations,  grading  nor 
educational  ceremonial  of  any  description.  The  body 
of  officious  people  formerly  called  teachers,  who  had 
soberly  followed  imparting  and  interference  as  a  sepa- 
rate profession,  passed  away  entirely,  for  all  contrib- 
uted, each  in  a  natural  way,  not  only  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  young,  but  of  those  less  advanced  than 
themselves.  It  was  observed  that  the  teachers,  those 
high-tensioned  hands  of  the  educational  factory,  hav- 
ing, altogether  the  most  difficult,  unappreciated  and 
monstrously  unnatural  part  to  play  in  the  intellectual 
industrialism  of  the  time,  were*very  glad  to  disappear. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE   INVASION   OF   KNOWLEDGE. 

A  group  of  young  men  and  women,  seeing  how 
things  were  going  in  society,  organized  a  system  of 
their  own  to  go  about  teaching  the  common-schooled 
and  untaught  people.  There  were  hardly  any  college 
students  among  these,  and  such  as  were  of  the  college 
or  university  blue  breed  were  those  whom  the  profes- 
sors loved  least  and  pigeon-holed  as  educational  vag- 
rants. They  were  individuals  with  personality  and  a 
will  not  servile  to  their  monitors,  whom  they  declined 
to  reflect.  No  professor  was  ever  known  to  identify 
himself  with  this  movement,  or  to  say  a  good  word  for 
it,  until  the  people  were  won  over,  when  the  profes- 
sor class  came  into  its  arms  stampeding.  Nor  was 
their  accession  then  of  any  consequence,  for  one  of  the 
first  things  society  did  after  the  change  was  to  dis- 
patch that  class. 

No  one  thought  of  censuring  the  professors  for 
their  tardiness,  any  more  than  he  thought  of  blaming 
miners  for  living  in  the  dark.  The  professors'  or- 
dained duty  was  to  drill  the  raw  recruits  for  station  in 
life  and  to  teach  all  whom  god  intended  to  enrich  with 
riches  how  to  wring  them  dry  into  their  private  tubs. 
When  the  professors  met  any  student  who  was  not  on 
a  blind  gallop  after  reputation,  they  were  afraid  of 
him,  for  they  saw  that  if  all  youths  were  like  that  the 
moon  of  professoring  would  set.  They  said  one  to 


34  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

another  that  such  an  one's  mind  was  out  of  joint,  and 
devoted  all  their  sophistry  to  sprouting  'ambitions'  in 
him,  whereupon,  if  these  failed  to  root,  they  declared 
he  was  not  educab'le. 

The  uneducable,  therefore,  united  to  spread  the 
light  they  found  burning  in  themselves  and  extin-' 
guished  in  the  university  dark-lanterns,  over  the  grop- 
ing American  continent.  They  went  singly- from  town 
to  town  with  no  money  in  their  purses  and  no  purses 
to  make  them  think  of  money.  When  they  came  to  a 
town  they  sought  the  most  enlightened  spirits,  and 
found  them  always  among  the  poor.  To  these  they 
said,  '  Show  us  how  we  may  work  and  earn  our  daily 
bread  —  give  us  not  our  daily  bread,  but  let  us  earn 
it  —  and  call  together  the  souls  of  your  community 
who  are  loyal  to  light,  and  let  us  confer  with  one  an- 
ther.' And  in  the  evening,  when  the  salt  of  that  town 
was  assembled,  the  wandering  apostle  of  life  said  to 
them : 

'  The  twilight  of  a  new,  miraculous  day  thrills  the 
East.  The  sun  lingers  in  his  luminous  chamber 
awaiting  the  order  of  ten  thousand  united  wills 
to  come  forth.  These  wills  shall  say,  "The  sun 
shall  rise  now;  by  my  soul  it  shall  not  wait 
for  the  generation  of  to-morrow,  it  shall  rise  by 
our  compulsion.  We  will  not  live  our  lives  in  the 
night."  The  stin  longs  to  rise.  But  it  must  have 
friends  among  mortals,  and  cowards  are  not  friends. 
Cowards  wait  for  others  to  act,  the  brave  and  true  act 
themselves,  to-day.  What  can  the  brave  do?  They 
can  say,  life  should  be  lived  thus  and  thus,  and  they 
can  live  it  so.  The  apostles  of  the  Nazarene  working- 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  35 

man  said,  by  putting  ourselves  under  the  four  corners 
of  earth  and  lifting,  the  earth  will  rise.  They  lifted 
and  the  mighty  foundations  of  the  earth  split.  In  each 
village  they  gathered  a  few,  and  these  in  their  tidal 
confidence  were  an  army.  Do  likewise.  Set  your 
ideals  as  high  as  the  stars;  laugh  compromise  out  of 
your  hearts  into  the  sepulchred  domiciles  of  capital. 
Do  all  that  thou  canst  for  this  mighty  cause  of  life, 
give  all  that  thou  hast  for  it.  Can  the  world  be 
moved  without  power?  Be  yourselves  that  power. 
Be  architects  of  a  new  society.  You  cannot  delegate 
this  task,  you  cannot  pay  men  to  change  society  for 
you.' 

These  and  other  words  spoke  the  preacher  scientists 
of  a  new  order.  And  the  people  were  stirred  and  met 
often  to  plan.  They  abandoned  their  old  ideals  of 
prosperity  and  lived  in  a  simple  manner.  They 
had  a  common  treasury  into  which  each  gave  all  that 
he  could  save  from  tl;e  needs  of  life,  and  these  funds 
were  used  to  spread  the  new  conception  of  living. 

Among  the  earliest  of  their  acts  was  the  building  of 
a  plain  hall,  to  which  all  contributed  the  labor  of  their 
hands.  This  was  always  open  and  all  speakers  could 
use  it  freely  for  whatever  subject  they  chose.  It  be- 
came a  forum  of  intense  intellectual  and  moral  life. 
Since  there  were  no  limitations  to  speech,  and  every 
subject  known  to  man  could  be  sifted  to  its  molecules, 
the  intellects  of  the  many  who  had  hitherto  lain  dor- 
mant in  churches  and  schools  and  shops  began  to 
wake  up.  They  caught  a  glimmer  of  the  wonderful 
world  it  was  they  lived  in,  and  said  to  themselves, 
'  What  helpless,  hapless  fools  we  have  indeed  been  to 


36  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

pass  through  this  fragrant,  unspeakable  garden  of 
life  as. a  traveler  in  a  railroad  train  with  the  blinds 
down.  The  end  of  the  journey  is  not  our  destination, 
the  garden  is  our  destination.' 

So  they  set  about  transforming  all  the  dead  accu- 
mulations of  science  and  experience  into  breathing  life 
material.  It  was  a  hard  task  at  first,  and  for  a  time  it 
was  feared  that  a  civil  war  would  be  necessary  to  in- 
duce the  scientists  to  impart  what  they  had  moun- 
tained  up,  for  so  insignificant  a  purpose  as  the  im- 
provment  of  human  life.  The  object  of  science  is  to 
furnish  the  materials  for  books,  they  objected,  and 
books  enable  teachers  to  have  the  appearance  of  wis- 
dom and  doctors  to  doctor.  Science  is  not  intended  to 
modify  the  life  of  the  crowd,  but  to  give  preoccupa- 
tion to  scientific  brains  which  have  passed  through 
the  transubstantiating  mediations  of  learning.  You 
say  the  institutions  should  be  freely  open  to  everyone 
to  come  and  go  as  he  pleases,  without  preparation,  gra- 
dation, limitation  or  sequestration, — that  would  stand 
education  on  its  head,  place  the  shined  professors 
under  the  inquisition  of  the  swift,  direct  inquisitiveness 
of  the  vulgar,  and  democratize  the  aristocracy  of 
knowledge  in  a  shabby  and  indecorous  manner. 

When. the  people  signified  their  intention  to  read  in 
the  libraries,  and  perform  experiments  in  the  labora- 
tories, and  watch  the  clinics,  without  certificates  or 
antecedents  or  recommendations  from  anybody,  the 
professors  would  have  organized*  the  students  into  mil- 
itary companies  to  protect  their  rights  to  these  things 
unshared ;  but  the  students  went  home,  not  wishing  to 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  37 

associate  with  illiterate  persons,  even  as  enemies  in 
war. 

Then  a  great  raid  was  made  on  the  locked-up  liter- 
ature, as  western  pioneers  rush  upon  a  gold  field,  each 
man  seeking  the  shining  lumps.  They  were  aston- 
ished to  find  how  much  was  insolvent  dirt  and  rock,  and 
could  not  understand  why  men  of  monstrous  and  re- 
nowned intelligence  spent  their  whole  lives  picking 
the  particles  of  these  substances,  apparently  thinking 
that  they  were  the  gold;  until  they  learned  that  it  was 
a  profession,  following  which  night  and  day  from 
adolescence  on,  the  brains  of  these  extraordinary  dig- 
gers became  lead  poisoned,  and  everything  at  length 
looked  precisely  the  same  to  them. 

But  the  new  'prospectors  refused  to  debauch  their 
brains  with  dirt,  and  took  the  gold  only.  They  se- 
lected what  pertained  to  life  in  any  manner,  and  es- 
pecially the  ingredients  of  physical  and  mental  power 
and  durability,  and  whatever  would  add  to  the  happi- 
ness of  any  mortal  while  palaced  on  this  planet,  and 
these  they  imparted  to  the  people  assembled  in  the 
halls,  showing  them  how  to  absorb  into  their  lives  the 
magic  essences,  to  make  them  chyle  and  nutriment, 
driving  out  the  depraved  aborigines  and  making  a 
mighty  and  immortal  flesh.  The  children  deserted 
the  schools  to  come  and  hear,  and  as  at  all  times 
there  was  some  one  discoursing  simply,  and  other 
grown  persons  standing  about  eager  to  explain  to  the 
children  in  little  groups  what  they  did  not  understand, 
leaving  them  free  to  come  and  go  as  they  pleased  and 
enticing  them  with  every  form  of  instructive  activity, 
they  did  not  return  to  the  schools  afterwards. 


38  A   I.EAGUK   OF  JUSTICE. 

L,ife  began  immediately  with  these  children.  A 
little  useful  niche  was  found  for  each,  where  he  or  she 
performed  some  pleasant  industrial  service,  and  feeling 
the  responsibility  of  usefulness,  his  faculties  grew 
alert  and  enquiring.  Everyone  was  led  whithersoever 
he  desired  to  go,  and  beginning  anywhere,  around 
that  beginning  was  gradually  clustered  a  whole  sys- 
tem of  scientific  knowledge  and  action.  A  child 
chose  its  own  path,  instinctively  displaying  its  apti- 
tudes, and  to  that  path  was  brought  everything  which 
could  further  its  progress  and  minister  to  its  growth. 
The  custom  had  formerly  been  to  take  the  child  up 
onto  a  mountain  and  point  to  a  winding  foot-way  in 
the  blue  distance.  Between  were  forests  and  murk> 
swamps,  rivers  black  and  foaming,  sand  plains  and 
rock-clad  ridges,  bottomless  holes  moss- veiled.  Make 
your  way  to  that  foot-path,  the  educator  said,  and  it 
will  lead  you  somewhere. 

Everybody  now  took  a  hand  in  educating,  and  their 
greatest  delight  was  to  go  among  the  young  in  their 
games  and  lively  studies,  to  learn  from  them  and 
teach  them,  and  to  hear  the  noble  cavaliers  of  free- 
dom who  had  broken  down  the  university  ramparts 
for  common  occupancy,  discourse.  Love  seemed  to 
spring  up  among  the  people,  and  each  sought  to 
impait  what  he  had  to  the  rest,  like  a  steadily  burn- 
ing star.  Men  and  women  forgot  who  were  their  own 
children,  so  interested  and  delighted  were  they  in  all, 
and  the  children  ate  and  slept  at  the  home  where  they 
happened  to  be,  feeling  toward  all  as  toward  parents, 
and  receiving  the  tenderest  care. 

As  there  was  no  further  u.se  for  the  school  buildings, 


A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  39 

they  were  made  annexes  of  the  halls  and  used  for  edu- 
cational purposes.  In  the  summer  time  the  halls  and 
annexes  were  almost  entirely  deserted,  for  everything 
was  done  in  the  open  air;  and  eve^one  became  so 
strong  and  vital  that  a  great  deal  of  the  working  and 
thinking  which  had  previously  smelt  of  coal  and  car- 
bonic gas  was  now  performed  under  the  airy  ceiling  of 
the  sky  and  the  thought-bearing  smile  of  the  juvenile, 
soft-skinned  sun. 


CHAPTER  IX 
TRANSFIGURATION  OF  THE  CHURCHES. 

When  the  crusading  lecturers  on  life  returned  from 
their  successful  trip  to  the  tombs  of  knowledge  and 
began  their  Sunday  impartations  to  the  thirsty  few 
who  gathered  about  them,  the  churches  were  proceed- 
ing along  the  unrippled  float  of  their  dormitory  elo- 
quence. On  their  way  home,  much  rested,  some  of 
the  planks  and  beams  of  the  ecclesiastical  men-of- 
war  occasionally  dropped  in  to  hear  the  closing  words 
of  a  religion  of  life.  They  went  home  troubled  in 
spirit  and  impaired  in  appetites,  and  returned  the  suc- 
ceeding Sunday  to  hear  the  whole  gospel.  They  saw 
how  light  of  heart  the  new  religionists  were  and  what 
impregnable  health  had  already  taken  possession  of 
their  bodies,  and  they  said  to  their  fellow  planks  and 
spars,  '  This  is  the  true  church ;  knowledge  adapted 
to  life  is  religion ;  the  enthusiasm  to  construe!  a  grand, 
adorable  earth  is  divine  love ; '  and  they  joined  the 
church  of  science,  whose  soul  was  human  humanity. 

As  plank  after  plank  parted  from  the  armored  fleet 
of  theology,  the  cannons  thundered  terrific  prognostica- 
tions from  the  pulpits,  pointing  their  muzzles  straight 
at  the  simple  wooden  shells  where  Truth  had  taken 
up  her  abode.  The  next  Sunday  every  lay  timber  in 
the  ships  went  to  view  the  corpse  of  Truth,  after  the 
sulphurous  cannonade,  expecting  to  see  her  perforated 
and  jellied ;  but  finding  her  alive  and  perfect,  they 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  41 

tarried  and  were  captivated  by  her  words.  There  was 
left  of  the  sacerdotal  crafts  nothing  but  the  iron 
aimor  plating  of  creeds  and  the  heavy-toned  oracle 
guns,  and  while  it  is  difficult  to  say  which  sank  the 
other,  both  went  down. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE   WATERLOO   OF    "SOCIETY." 

A  curious  change  was  meanwhile  taking  place  in 
what  is  nomenclaturally  known  as  'society.'  The 
rich  had  always  found  it  simple  to  bow  culture  before 
the  shrines  of  their  dinners,  and  the  excellent  Mr. 
Emerson  had  said,  '  To  be  rich  is  to  have  a  ticket  of 
admission  to  the  master-works  and  chief  men  of  each 
race.'  Brains  seemed  to  think  that  one  of  the  rea- 
sons why  it  existed  was  to  win  its  way  into  the  society 
of  the  brainless.  .The  man  of  money  winked  at  the 
man  of  brains  and  the  man  of  brains  had  an  ecstacy. 
The  women  of  money  *  society  '  made  lions  and  calves 
of  the  men  of  genius,  and  brought  their  friends 
together  to  examine  the  wonder,  to  feel  of  his  ears 
and  count  his  teeth,  to  adore  and  exclaim,  '  Oh  !  our 
man  of  genius !  our  menagerie  !  our  poodle  dog ! 
When  the  man  of  brains  got  as  far  as  this,  he  thought 
he  had  lived  to  some  purpose.  His  gigantic  cerebrum, 
whirling  with  the  joyous  mesmerism  of  gleaming  pot- 
tery and  gems,  to  which  —  great  god  how  wonder- 
ful!—  he,  only  a  man  of  mind  and  soul,  was  after 
toilsome  years  allowed  revering  access,  could  not  hear 
the  sardonic  laugh  of  scornful  condescension  in  the 
vacuums  of  these  creatures  of  money  where  the  soul 
of  those  soul-dowered  is  wont  to  sit. 

The  change  originated  when  men  of  brains  planted 
their  first  crop  of  character.  It  originated  with  the 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  43 

working  people,  where  the  soil  was  rich  enough  for 
character  to  grow.  The  leaders  of  this  exodus  froni 
sycophancy  and  snobbery  were  those  burglers  of  sci- 
ence, the  outlaws  who  had  broken  into  books  and 
were  distributing  their  booty  every  Sunday  in  the 
lecture  halls.  Seeing  that  they  were  '  extraordinary 
persons,'  the  rich  society  sharks  prepared  to  swallow 
and  digest  them.  They  sent  around  to  them  those 
beautiful  little  missives  of  corruption  and  missiles  of 
death  —  invitations  to  eat  and  be  merry  with  them 
and  marry.  If  they  married  the  progeny  of  the  rich 
imbeciles  the  eating  imbeciles  knew  that  the  children 
of  the  combination  would  be  bailed  and  neutered  of 
genius,  and  property  and  imbecility  would  be  safe. 

There  was  crape  on  all  the  rich  men's  doors  the 
next  morning,  for  the  extraordinary  persons  had 
refused  to  come  to  be  digested,  and  the  rich  were 
mourning  to  think  that  they  would  have  to  intermarry 
their  sons  and  their  daughters  one  with  another,  and 
the  descending  crop  would  not  stop  on  the  perfectly 
decorous  stage  of  imbecility,  but  would  dip  down  to  its 
legitimate  levels  of  idiocy. 

As  feasts  and  bullion  were  substances  which  nearly 
all  the  great  and  noble  characters  of  history  had 
sought  after  as  their  befitting  pay  for  being  created 
great,  the  benighted  possessors  of  these  things  thought 
that  the  extraordinary  ones  had  perhaps  not  under- 
stood what  they  were  being  invited  to,  having  recently 
sprung  from  the  working  classes,  where  nothing  was 
known  straight.  So  they  held  a  meeting  among 
themselves  and  appointed  delegates  composed  of  the 
most  money  to  go  to  the  extraordinaries  and  explain* 


44  A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

These  bullion-ballasted  tanks  of  expectation  were 
ushered  into  the  ante-rooms  of  the  halls  where  the 
scientific  highwaymen  were  beginning  a  wild  joyous 
hour  of  play  and  instruction  with  the  children,  and  were 
told  to  wait  until  the  hour  was  over  if  they  wished  to 
confer  with  the  extraordinary.  They  felt  as  they  had 
always  prided  themselves  on  making  delegations  of 
workingmen  feel  when  these  came  to  plead  with  them 
for  their  underfed  little  ones.  But  they  choked  down 
their  pride,  for  they  realized  with  terror  that  if  they 
could  not  prevail  upon  these  vital  men  to  come  to 
their  houses  to  be  effeminated  and  routed,  it  was  all 
up  with  their  race  and  their  uselessness. 

When  the  hour  was  over  and  the  religious  bohe- 
inians  learned  who  were  awaiting  them,  they  declined 
to  confer  with  the  petitioners,  saying  that  the  bright 
life  of  the  day  called  them,  and  while  breath  was  in 
them  they  could  not  think  of  dead  thoughts  or  climb 
down  into  reactionary  catacombs. 

The  rich  men  then  decided  upon  a  dazzling  opera- 
tion of  generalship.  They  would  endow  the  halls,  for 
when  the  extraordinaries  had  salaries  safe  and  perpet- 
ual dangling  before  their  jaws,  they  would  come  down 
from  the  twig  of  principle  like  a  shot  bird.  There- 
fore they  put  what  acumen  and  property  they  could 
bring  themselves  to  part  with  into  an  endowment, 
making  it  enormous  in  their  desperation ;  but  the  lec- 
turers refused  to  touch  it,  saying  that  the  rich  could 
keep  their  stolen  possessions  until  tomorrow,  when  the 
people  would  take  them  all  to  endow  the  life  of  all. 
Many  of  the  rich  then  made  over  the  whole  of  their 
property  to  the  common  fund  of  the  new  movement, 


A   I,KAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  45 

ceased  bargaining  for  preference,  and  came  as  simple 
men  to  partake  of  the  incalculable  joys  and  beauties  of 
true  life. 

When  Homer  and  Buddha,  the  religion  of  Jesus 
and  the  aristocracy  of  Shakespeare,  were  long  forgot- 
ten, the  thrilling  story  of  how  a. handful  of  brave  men 
and  women  withstood  the  ever  before  conquering 
bludgeoning  blandishments  of  '  society  '  on  a  high 
mountain  and  delivered  the  human  race,  was  told  to  the 
marvelous  magnificent  children  who  sprang  ages 
after  from  this  deed  of  superhuman  heroism. 

When  'society'  dreadfully  gasped  its  last,  a  great 
miracle  occurred,  for  the  earth  suddenly  became  four 
times  larger  than  it  was  before,  to  accomodate  the  tre- 
mendous humanity  which  was  about  to  be  born. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

POLITICAL    PARTIKS   ALSO. 

The  most  terrible  affliction  known  to  those  days, 
after  the  dead  evils  heretofore  recounted,  was  political 
parties.  They  were  like  a  wild  bull  in  a  compart- 
ment with  men  without  trees  to  get  behind,  and  they 
were  always  doing  something  surprising  and  deadly. 
An  enormous  sum  of  treasure  and  sacred  time  was 
spent  upon  them,  men  voting  and  sweating  and  swear- 
ing and  voting,  and  so  chivalrous  as  not  to  let  the 
women  share  the  swear  and  vote  with  them.  Every 
man  whom  they  elected  disappointed  them,  having 
hired  his  own  election,  so  the  rotatory  multitude  pre- 
pared to  sweat  and  vote  another  personally  nominated 
incumbent  in.  They  kept  this  up  like  bats  flying 
back  and  forth  through  the  twilight,  just  for  the  sake 
of  doing  it,  but  mainly  that  they  might  sometime  be 
able  to  buy  themselves  in ;  for  those  who  turned  the 
windlass  of  the  voting  multitude  were  few  in  number 
but  mighty. 

The  first  man  who  said  it  was  not  necessary  to  rule 
by  political  parties  was  imprisoned  by  his  compatriots 
as  a  maniac,  and  many  wanted  to  lynch  him,  for 
without  the  excitement  of  voting  and  getting  angry 
and  being  disappointed  and  repenting,  and  doing  it 
all  over  again  as  often  as  possible,  they  did  not  see 
how  they  could  get  their  exceedingly  vicious  code  of 
laws  made  more  vicious.  Nobody  but  a  self-elected 


A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  47 

politician  could  come  off  more  than  conquerer  in  that 
emergency,  and  the  sparkling-minded  crowd  there- 
fore clung  to  him  like  a  life-preserver.  But  the  soli- 
tary man  wrote  books  on  the  subject  in  his  cell  and 
dropped  the  leaflets  about  it  out  of  the  barred  window. 

Just  at  this  time  the  first  band  of  crusaders  were  re- 
turning from  their  pilgrimage  to   rescue   knowledge 
from  the  university  infidels,  and  they  passed  under  the 
jail  windows  by  accident.     They  saw  the  leaves  flying 
.  there  and  carried  them  awray  to  read. 

'  O  perverse  ones  of  this  purblind  generation,'  read 
the  book,  'do  families  manage  themselves  by  political 
parties,  or  churches,  or  universities,  or  any  great  and 
prosperous  societies?  When  you  divide  one  of  these 
into  opposing  factions  to  rule  it  that  way,  you  may  be 
sure  its  doom  has  been  writ  and  undersigned  by  the 
shadows  in  heaven.  But  when  it  is  a  country  all  is 
different,  and  the  littlest  hamlets  follow  the  national 
example,  doing  everything  through  a  fight  and  spend- 
ing more  money  to  beat  each  other  than  the  things 
would  naturally  cost  which  they  beat  each  other 
to  do.  And  yet  after  all  why  do  parties  exist?  Is  it 
not  to  get  good  and  necessary  things  done  in  the  best 
possible  way?  And  if  parties  get  the  good  things  not 
done,  and  in  the  worst  and  evilest  possible  way,  is  it 
not  clear  that  parties  are  a  nuisance  and  incumbrance  ? 
That  is  what  they  do. 

'As  soon  as  a  party  organization  is  formed,  the 
objects  for  which  it  was  formed  begin  to  be  forgotten, 
and  the  mere  avarice  of  success  animates  it  more  and 
more.  Whatever  originates  from  one  party  must  be 
decried  by  the  other,  lest  the  people  should  think  that 


48  A   I.KAGUK   OF  JUSTICE. 

the  first  party  was  doing  a  good  thing  and  vote  with 
it.  Finally  all  the  people  are  drawn  into  a  barren 
conflict  on  one  side  or  the  other,  and  all  receive  a 
one-sided  warp,  being  no  longer  capable  of  holding 
the  entire  situation  in  mental 'solution.  They  get  the 
superstition  that  their  particular  party  holds  so  much 
of  the  truth  in  its  little  sack  that  they  must  always 
keep  their  party  in  power,  to  prevent  their  dangerous 
opponents  from  having  a  chance  to  destroy  the  coun- 
try with  their  depraved  policy  and  heinous  political 
machinations.  While  they  are  thus  saving  the  coun- 
try, all  the  good  measures  proposed  by  the  other  party 
are  shelved,  and  as  they  themselves  have  no  energy 
left  after  saving  the  country  to  propose  good  measures 
of  their  own,  the  country  is  being  ruined  at  down 
grade  speed  by  its  magnanimous  saviours.  The  other 
party  becomes  the  saviour  when  it  gets  in,  and  has  no 
time  for  profitable  measures,  and  by  and  by  they  all 
reach  a  complete  state  of  fossilage,  hateful  in  the 
extreme  to  every  honest  and  clear  mind,  and  fatal 
in  the  extreme  to  the  nation's  weal. 

4  Then  the  good  see  that  what  parties  started  out  to 
do  they  absolutely  fail  to  do ;  starting  to  govern  the 
country  well,  they  not  only  govern  it  ill,  they  do  not 
govern  it  at  all,  and  they  therefore  decide  to  break  up 
political  parties.  How  do  they  do  it  ?  They  first  of 
all—' 

At  this  point  in  the  book  the  general  of  the  jail 
discovered  through  informers  what  this  seditious  per- 
son was  engaged  in,  and  sent  ten  of  his  bravest  assist- 
ants to  put  an  end  to  it  by  placing  the  prisoner  in 
chains.  Thus  it  did  not  appear  what  they  first  of  all 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  49 

did  to  break  up  political  parties,  nor  what  they  did 
after  that. 

But  the  intellectual  crusaders  had  learned  enough. 
They  said  among  themselves,  '  The  United  States  has 
now  had  the  small-pox  of  political  parties  and  seems 
in  no  fair  way  to  recover.  But  if  we  can  pull  her 
through,  she  need  never  have  that  vile  incrustation 
again.  No  man  should  belong  to  any  party,  except 
to  a  party  pledged  to  act  independently  of  every  party 
and  each  member  in  it  to  a<5l  independently  of  every 
other  member.  There  should  be  great  proselyting  for 
this  Party  of  Political  Freedom,  which  would  end  by 
being  simply  a  Party  of  Freedom,  and  the  only  party, 
and  then  no  party.  For  when  they  became  numerous 
they  would  totally  break  up  all  party  lines  and 
machinery,  for  if  no  party  could  rally  the  people  to  it 
and  hold  a  powerful  contingent  through  thick  and 
thin,  good  and  bad,  it  would  break  up.  Then  instead 
of  political  parties  there  would  be  a  country,  a  people. 
Their  minds  would  be  liberated  from  the  overpower- 
ing mechanism  of  politics,  and  could  search  and  weigh 
the  reasons  for  each  thing  proposed  ;  and  thus  being 
instructed  and  having  no  party  hanging  over  them  as 
a  higher  motive  than  the  public  good,  twisting  their 
judgment  and  will,  they  would  unite  to  enact  the 
good  as  any  group  of  intelligent  persons  or  a  family 
does.' 

There  being  no  sentiment  as  yet  in  favor  of  such  an 
all-embracing  party  of  intelligence  and  freedom,  how- 
ever, the  discoverers  of  the  hemisphere  of  life  deter- 
mined to  try  the  experiment  among  themselves,  and  to 
show  in  this  winning  and  unanswerable  manner  what 


50  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

a  round-about  way  society  was  traveling  to  reach  no- 
where, when  a  beautiful  region  lay  near  and  straight 
before  it.  They  therefore  formed  an  embryonic 
state  within  the  old  state  husk,  the  units  of  which  were 
a  new  community  in  each  community.  These  commu- 
nities consisted  of  a  number  of  friendly  persons  who 
agreed  that  politics  was  not  a  separate  function  of 
life,  and  that  it  therefore  needed  no  separate  atten- 
tion. Having  a  separate  politics  was  as  if  a  farmer 
should  call  upon  a  neighbor  to  form  his  family  and 
hired  help  into  committees  and  bureaus  to  lay  out  and 
correspond  and  vote  about  his,  the  first  farmer's, 
work.  While  the  second  farmer  and  his  secretaries 
were  doing  this,  the  first  one  would  be  going  on  as 
usual  with  the  work  which  was  being  legislated  about, 
with  the  difference  that  now  the  farmer  had  to  sup- 
port not  only  his  own  farm  group,  but  that  which  he 
had  appointed  to  build  air-castles  and  cast  votes  con- 
cerning it. 

Abolishing  all  this  pretty  paraphernalia,  they 
adopted  the  new  code  of  life  in  which  they  believed, 
and  began  without  preliminaries  or  authorization  to 
carry  it  out.  For  instance,  without  waiting  for  the 
unsanitary  officials  to  leave  their  duties  unperformed 
through  all  coming  time,  they  voluntarily  took  the  pro- 
crastinated functions  upon  themselves  as  far  as  their 
numbers  permitted.  They  invited  any  who  believed 
in  the  usury  of  good  health  to  join  them,  and  this  way 
of  putting  it  won  the  throng  who  were  looking  for  a 
good  investment,  and  would  have  preferred  typhus  to 
helping  them  if  they  had  called  it  the  socialism  of 
good  health.  In  all  things  they  were  very  sagacious 


A   I^AGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  51 

• 

about  the  use  of  words,  and  they  found  they  could 
drag  the  public  wherever  they  wanted  to  take  it  by 
the  tag  of  a  syllable. 

For  example,-  when  they  wanted  to  do  anything 
with  the  co-operation  of  all,  they  advertised  that  they 
had  a  laissez  faire  plan  on  foot,  and  every  business 
man  sent  a  thousand  dollars  to  aid  the  individualistic 
project.  If  they  wanted  to  abolish  a  function  of  gov- 
ernment they  told  the  people  it  was  paternal,  with  a 
squint  of  Socialism  in  it,  and  everybody  went  into  a 
passion  to  abolish  the  function'  before  night.  By 
merely  saying  that  it  was  anarchistic  for  the  govern- 
ment not  to  own  land  and  everything  by  which  any- 
thing is  produced,  the  people  one  day  nationalized 
everything,  men  as  well  as  shops  and  railroads  and 
land,  for  they  said  men  produced  things  and  it  was 
worse  to  have  men  who  were  anarchists  than  shops 
which  were,  so  men  must  be  socialized.  The  authors 
of  this  experiment  next  day  remarked  that  it  was  not 
anarchistic  but  individualistic  to  have  shops  and  land 
private,  and  immediately  everything  was  unnational- 
ized.  Thus  they  played  on  the  intellectual  American 
middle  and  upper  classes  as  on  a  piano  out  of  tune. 

The  health  of  the  community  improved  so  rapidly 
under  their  sanitary  management,  that  the  public 
boards  and  departments,  which  had  been  drawing 
salaries  and  neglecting  their  duties  ever  since  sanita- 
tion was  discovered,  resigned  and  left  the  field 
entirely  to  them.  So  they  took  one  department  after 
another  out  of  the  government  or  municipal  control, 
first  carrying  it  on  in  a  small  way  among  themselves, 
then  having  a  great  augmentation  of  numbers  from 


52  A   IYKAGUK   OF  JUSTICE. 

• 

those  admiring  the  way  it  was  conducted  and  wishing 
to  enjoy  the  benefits  of  it.  Government  by  that  time 
being  in  a  minority,  was  compelled  by  the  ballot  to 
turn  the  function  over  to  them  unreservedly. 

Of  course  political  parties  had  no  part  in  this  pro- 
cess except  to  fight  it,  but  after  they  had  been  worsted 
in  one  thing  after  another  and  driven  completety  from 
the  field  in  every  important  government  enterprise, 
they  gave  up  in  disgust  and  their  members  turned 
respedlable  citizens. 

They  then  built  in  every  town  and  city  a  forum,  or 
several  of  them,  commensurate  with  the  needs  of  the 
city,  where  the  people  could  assemble  and  make  one 
another's  acquaintance,  where  they  could  loaf  and 
enjoy  themselves,  each  other,  and  the  sun,  where  they 
could  discuss,  hear  addresses,  debate,  and  project  and 
agree  to  public  measures.  The  plain  halls  had  grown 
to  these,  and  for  the  winter  use  there  were  covered 
forums.  Life  became  diversified  and  centralized  ; 
men's  and  women's  eyes  grew  keen  and  beautiful  ; 
they  were  interested  in  life. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

DISCOVERY   ON   A   SUFFICIENT   SCALE. 

But  in  carrying  the  reader  forward  over  results 
which  occupied  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century,  I  have 
left  him  in  suspense  about  the  fate  of  the  organiza- 
tion of  embezzlers  to  whose  considerable  exertions  all 
these  splendid  transformations  were  due.  Going  back 
ten  years  events  of  a  most  portentous  character  trans- 
pired. It  was  then  that  the  entire  league  was 
unearthed,  fourteen  years  after  its  inception. 

The  discovery  came  through  an  accident  of  nature 
which  the  wisdom  of  man  could  neither  provide  against 
nor  foresee.  The  private  secretaries  of  the  founders 
were  as  noble,  pure-minded,  zealous  and  reliable  as 
the  fathers  of  the  league  themselves.  But  their  work 
grew  so  heavy  that  from  time  to  time  it  was  necessary 
to  increase  their  number.  So  great  was  the  caution 
required  for  a  suitable  selection,  that  a  considerable 
period  sometimes  elapsed  before  the  proper  person  was 
found.  During  one  of  these  periods,  when  the  burden 
upon  the  college  of  correspondents  was  uncommonly 
great,  one  of  the  secretaries  was  suddenly  taken  with 
an  insanity  which  had  slept  in  his  family  for  two  gen- 
erations, and  of  which  none  of  the  guardians  of  the 
league  were  cognizant,  the  parents  and  grand  parents 
of  the  capable  and  excellent  man  having  appeared 
sound  in  every  respect. 

This  secretary  disappeared,  and  a  week  later  certain 


54  A   I,KAGUK   OF  JUSTICE. 

simultaneous  arrests  were  made,  two  of  whom  were 
tin-  League's  founders.  It  was  rumored  about  the 
country  by  telegraph  that  a  stupendous  organization 
of  employes  existed  for  the  purpose  of  robbing  em- 
ployers. Kverybody  hastened  to  examine  his  books, 
and  so  many  discovered  themselves  victims  that  a 
panic  -, piead  over  the  entire  commercial  population. 
A  IK  stfl  wen-  made  to  the  number  of  hundreds  a  day. 
No  man  conld  tell  but  all  his  clerks  were  in  lea 
against  him,  and  many  an  employer  had  his  whole 
stall  'jailed.  The  officials  and  police  lost  their  heads 
dnriiii',  that  peiiod,  and  no  evidence  but  the  suspicion 
oi  a  capitalist  was  ie<|iiiicd  to  throw  a  thousand  men 
into  pi  ison. 

Tin-  heii/.v  reached  itS  lull  Im  v  when  the  police,  b. 
multiplied  to  ninety  seven  times  their  usual  numbci 
which  gave  empluvmcnt  to  work  iiivjneii      having  been 
MTe8ting  m:.;ht  and  day  l«.i   a  week,  swept    down  upon 

the   lieu-. papel    ollicc-,  <il     tile     Icav'Ueaild    ca  1  1  led   c\ 'el  V 

cditni  nil  In  irons,    The  total  number  of  incarcerations 

hovncd  about    .-.,«'. thatdav.    although  the    Society 

all  told    had    but    50, meinbeis.    and  most    ot    them 

had  been  omitted  in  the  arrests,   because  oi  the  conii 

deuce   Iheil     elU].]o\(;  d     ill     then     c  \  t  1  aoi  dilUl  V 

lidelit\.  Some  n|  the  aiicstcd  OHCS  \\lio  \veie  not 
made  D|  leavllc  Ult(;;llt\  had  becll  stealin;.;  a  little  oil 
then  own  account,  and  thinking  the  whole  diMuib.iurc 
w:is  occasionc'd  b\  that  (  loi  thc\  had  seen  that  the 
Hull  ol  a  cent  01  .1  COtton  haudkci  chid  \\ould  thio\\  a 
licli  emploNci  into  Convulsions  ol  tempci  loi  hor. 
th<  \  beli«-\cd  that  tin  11  <loom  had  couu  .  'Pho-,c  \\ho, 

licni;;     (    \tl<IMcl\      cn\\ed     1»\     til*'    1 1  id  1 1 '-t  1  1 . 1 1    •,',  1  .1  lldcll  1    ol 


A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  >> 

their  employer  and  his  divine  power  to  make  beggars 
of  them,  feared  that  they  might  have  stolen  something 
without  knowing  it,  were  in  a  state  of  heart-rending 
grief  and  sent  for  their  ministers,  who,  however,  did 
not  dare  to  come  lest  they  should  be  thought  to  con- 
done the  criminals,  and  should  lose  the  support  of 
their  employers.  But  there  were  several  out  of  the 
quarter  million  who  declared  in  wrath  that  were  it  not 
for  the  free  food  and  the  rest  they  were  now  having 
for  a  few  days,  they  would  fight  the  unjust  scoundrels 
the  employers  and  their  system,  when  they  got  out,  if 
they  ever  did  alive. 

The  prisons  did  not  begin  to  be  large  enough  and 
the  criminals  were  lodged  in  the  school-houses,  which 
were  easily  convened  into  keeps  for  the  parents  of 
those  who  were  wont  to  be  confined  there.  The  chil- 
dien,  on  their  part,  hailed  their  liberation  witl^  eesv 
tacy,  cheering  their  '  >rs  —  the  police  —  as  tbe 

school  children  ot    Uud.ip,  s  before,  freed  by  an 

epidemic  ot  cholera,  cried,  long  live  the  cholera* 

The  militia  were  called  out.  Init    most   ot   them  had 
been  arrested  and  could  not  come.      The  regular  aum 
and    navy  were  put    in   motion,  toi    it  was  well   kr., 
that    theii    mummied   minds   were    nntlecked   1>\    any 
tiling  relating  to  the  process  ot  the  times. 

In  the  memory  ot  the  living  only  the  days  when 
Sumpter  was  tiled  against  and  Lincoln  O&SaSSinattd 
bore  the  palest  u-semMance  to  the  lurid  v;loom  ot  this 
period,  and  in  thesinistei  annals  ol  luston  tlu-te  ate 
tew  spols  wheu-  sueh  v;uashim;  constei  nat  UMI  is  u --M-. 
teu-d  as  settled  do\\  n  upon  the  Ameiiran  »-oi, linen! 
through  thai  event.  business  la\  dead.  I.M  u,»  man. 


56  A   IvKAGUK   OF  JUSTICE. 

not  even  a  business  man,  thought  of  buying,  selling 
or  working  in  the  silent  but  terrific  excitement  of  the 
time. 

The  capitalist  dailies  came  out  in  fifty-page  extras 
each  hour,  spreading  new  particulars,  most  of  them 
false.  Every  man  knew  intuitively  that  he  was 
ruined  and  dared  not  face  a  microscopic  examination 
of  his  affairs.  No  one  doubted  that  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  the  plunderers  were  still  at  large,  brushing 
against  them  on  the  streets  and  preparing  to  complete 
their  annihilation  of  society.  They  expedled  the 
prisons  to  be  stormed  by  these  desperadoes,  where- 
upon they  were  assured  a  universal  massacre  of  them- 
selves would  ensue,  and  with  money  in  their  eyes 
they  besought  the  authorities  to  execute  the  few  cap- 
tured culprits  without  delay  or  the  formality  of  any- 
thing but  a  presidential  proclamation  couched  in 
court-martial  literature.  They  hoped  that  this  sug- 
gestive step  would  avert  the  perpendicular  drop  to 
pre-adamite  barbarism  which  would  follow  if  the  civil- 
ized and  humane  capitalists  bit  the  dust,  and  they 
said  the  world  might  as  well  not  be  peopled  at  all  as 
not  be  peopled  by  them. 

The  self-control  of  the  authorities,  including  the 
president  with  his  cabinet  ills  and  chattels,  was  now 
beyond  resuscitation,  and  these  executionary  mea- 
sures of  slaughter  would  undoubtedly  have  super- 
vened had  not  one  of  the  league  inventors  interfered. 
He  sent  word  to  the  president  of  the  Republic, 
requesting  to  be  allowed  to  confer  with  his  three  col- 
leagues in  originality,  for  the  purpose  of  allaying 
the  crisis.  The  prayer  was  granted,  under  a  strong 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  57 

guard  of  armed  men  and  a  stenographer.  He  pro- 
posed to  inform  the  authorities  of  the  existence  of  the 
league's  annals,  in  order  to  put  them  in  possession  of 
the  assuaging  truth.  He  pointed  out  to  his  associates 
that  the  league  had  now  accomplished  its  mission, 
and  according  to  the  solemn  compact  of  each  who  had 
joined,  all  were  now  bound  to  face  with  steady  mind 
the  full  consequences  of  their  pioneering  career. 
Death  was  staring  at  them  darkly  from  gas-posts, 
but  if  they  continued  silent  several  times  their  num- 
ber of  innocent  persons  would  perish  also.  He  there- 
fore advocated  calling  upon  the  chieftains  of  each  city 
to  notify  all  the  members,  through  their  group  chiefs 
(where  these  had  not  been  imprisoned),  of  their  plan 
of  preserving  the  Republic  and  saving  the  innocent 
from  butchery,  so  that  each  might  deliver  himself  up 
to  injustice  voluntarily  if  his  soul  moved  him 

This  was  done.  Up  to  that  moment  none  of  the 
incarcerated  leaguers,  though  pressed,  prayed  with, 
threatened,  bribed  and  tortured,  had  revealed  a  fact. 
When  the  suggestion  of  the  superior  committee  was 
authenticated  to  them,  all  went  to  the  astonished  of- 
ficers of  their  employers'  law  and  gave  themselves  up. 
The  whole  country  tvas  more  paralyzed  than  before, 
for  if  fifty  thousand  of  the  most  invincibly  true,  pure 
and  beautiful  characters  alive  had  been  chosen,  these 
would  have  been  the  ones.  Black  flags  and  crape 
streamers  were  hoisted  from  the  houses  of  all  the  capi- 
talists to  impress  the  populace  with  the  sombre  awful- 
ness  of  this  pulverizing  collapse  of  human  virtue,  and 
they  felt  secretly  that  with  such  a  fifty  thousand- 
tongued  example  of  clerical  retribution  it  would  never 


58  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

be  possible  for  them  to  conduct  their  business  of  plun- 
dering with  security  again. 

The  ancient  rusty  press  of  the  country,  now  that 
the  great  free  popular  press  was  silenced,  had  for 
the  first  time  in  years  an  opportunity  to  make  a  few 
coppers  and  be  read,  and  was  working  day  and  night 
to  give  voluminous  extracts,  digests  and  photographs 
of  the  proceedings  of  the  league,  taken  from  the  ten 
bulky  historical  volumes  which  the  secretaries  had 
compiled  under  the  direction  of  the  four  patriarchs. 

The  law  mercenaries  and  the  capitalists  now  re- 
gained the  courage  necessary  to  release  the  two  hund- 
red and  forty-nine  thousand  persons  who  had  been 
wrongfully  imprisoned,  but  when  they  saw  the  black 
looks  which  these  persons  brought  out  of  the  school 
houses  in  consequence  of  the  sooty  reputations  they  had 
received  there,  the  capitalists  stood  in  greater  fear  than 
before,  and  only  saved  their  lives  by  having  all  these 
menacing  individuals  put  on  the  extra  police  force 
where  they  could  draw  pay  for  doing  nothing.  This 
gave  healthy  employment  for  working  people,  whose 
support  naturally  had  to  come  out  of  the  private  sub- 
scriptions of  the  capitalists.  T^  appease  their  wrath 
and  protect  the  capitalists,  the  clerk-police  force  was 
armed  with  the  usual  club  and  a  revolver,  and  they 
went  about  drilling  and  showing  great  determination. 
The  fifty  thousand  actual  offenders  in  prison  were 
entirely  silent. 

Of  those  released,  a  great  many  had  been  editors  of 
the  People's  Free  Journal,  for  most  of  these  editors 
were  entirely  ignorant  t  of  the  incubating  process  by 
which  the  grand  news  educators  had  been  hatched. 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  59 

These  radiators  of  truth  now  began  again  their  inter- 
rupted publications. 

The  epileptic  dread  of  the  rich  having  somewhat 
subsided  again  by  the  disposition  of  the  reputation 
ruined  clerks  in  a  standing-  army  of  police  two  hund- 
red and  forty-nine  thousand  strong,  and  the  tranquil- 
izing  discovery  of  limits  to  the  dimensions  of  the 
defaulters'  organization,  the  clamor  for  instantaneous 
death  to  the  real  criminals  softened  into  a  gurgling 
determination  to  imprison  them  for  life  and  confiscate 
all  the  property  of  all  as  a  slight  reimbursement  offer- 
ing to  the  robbed,  and  to  make  their  infamied  "chil- 
dren remember  whose  children  they  were. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THK    TRIAL. 

The  customary  formalities  of  law  were  entirely  neu- 
tralized in  each  mind  by  the  aclinic  rays  of  vengeance 
which  fulminated  there,  and  the  capitalists,  who  now 
threw  off  all  the  amenities  with  which  they  usually 
led  the  administrators  of  government  and  'justice' 
about,  ordered  the  president  of  the  self-governing 
Republic  to  call  his  cabinet  of  executive  tinkers  and 
the  distinguished  shavers  of  the  supreme  bench  toge- 
ther to  settle  the  case  as  the  capitalists  required  it 
without  delay. 

The  capitalists  said  that  an  extreme  sentence  must 
be  meted  out  to  the  astounding  villains,  and  the  boss 
commercialist  of  the  white  house  and  his  journeymen 
said  that  it  must.  The  capitalists  said  that  the  minds 
of  all  future  generations  of  employes  could  only  be 
rescued  from  fearful  moral  debauchery  by  the  distri- 
bution of  summary  retribution,  and  the  presiding 
executive  mechanic  said  it  was  so.  The  capitalists 
nudged  the  supreme  benchmen  and  whispered  that 
the  plebeian  brains  of  their  common  servants  the 
dress-deifying  clerks  must  be  terrified  against  the 
recurrence  of  such  an  unparalleled  disaster,  and  the 
viscous  intellects  of  the  rest  of  the  common  people 
must  be  moulded  into  respect  for  law  and  the  com- 
mandments of  revealed  religion,  which  the  shocking 
magnitude  and  magnanimity  of  these  atrocious  crimes 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  6 1 

had  shaken,  by  a  woe-creating  realization  of  the  pierc- 
ing sorrows  the  squadron  of  justice  was  prepared  to 
saturate  them  with.  The  benchmen  bowed  assent  in 
respectful  silence,  holding  their  hats  and  wigs  and 
judicial  scales  in  their  adipose  hands. 

It  was  arranged  for  the  trial  to  take  place  in  the 
metropolis,  but  from  centre  to  ends  of  the  country 
none  but  indispensable  activities  were  resumed  and 
hardly  anybody  ate.  The  steady  stillness  and  order 
of  the  common  people  was  the  subject  of  frequent 
encomiastic  salutatory  cannonading  from  the  capital- 
ist press. 

The  trial  opened  with  the  examination  of  the  four 
founding  patriarchs  of  the  league,  who  were  to  repre- 
sent the  whole  organization  in  trial  but  not  in  punish- 
ment. 

' '  You  may  inform  the  Court  of  the  grand  aggregate 
of  your  defalcations,"  said  the  president  of  the  Repub- 
lic, acting  as  supreme  pontiff  of  the  compound  tri- 
bunal, after  having  asked  the  capitalists  if  he  might 
do  so. 

The  founder  to  whom  this  remark  was  addressed, 
replied,  speaking  with  a  pivotal  composure  which 
made  his  excellency  tingle  under  his  skin  :  ' '  Being 
employed  by  a  Trust  I  succeeded  in  extricating  yearly 
one  million  dollars." 

Preside  nt — Extricated  !  How  long  has  this  con- 
tinued ? 

The  Founder — Fourteen  years. 

President  [with  a  deprecating  gesture  of  conster- 
nation in  the  direction  of  the  capitalists] — Do  you 


62  A   I.KAGUK   OF  JUSTICE. 

mean  to  say  you  have  robbed  your  employers  of  four- 
teen million  dollars  ? 

Founder — I  have  taken  fourteen  million  dollars  of 
the  moneys  that  came  into  their  hands. 

[A  murmur  of  astonishment  runs  through  the  court 
room  and  is  echoed  outside  where  the  streets  are 
blocked  with  people  for  miles  away.] 

The  President  [endeavoring  to  be  satirical,  but 
trembling] — Have  others  been  as  thrifty  as  you .  in 
unloading  their  employers'  treasuries  ? 

Founder — Those  connected  with  Trusts  have,  in 
most  instances,  appropriated  one  million  dollars  a 
year. 

President — How  many  of  your  excellent  associates 
are  '  connected  with  '  Trusts  ? 

Founder — Not  less  than  three  hundred. 

President — Are  we  then  to  believe  that  not  less  than 
three  hundred  millions  yearly  for  fourteen  years  have 
been  stolen  by  your  unprincipled  imitators  from  Trusts 
alone  ? 

Founder — I  did  not  say  that.  Many  of  the  Trusts 
have  existed  less  than  fourteen  years,  and  the  clerks 
of  others  did  not  join  us  at  first.  Our  books  signify 
the  exact  sum  derived  from  each.  The  average 
annual  transactions  of  the  I/eague  have  been  one 
hundred  million  dollars ;  last  year  the  income  was 
nearly  three  times  that  amount. 

The  President  [drily] — This  is  the  story  of  a  luna- 
ti:,  or  of  one  who  would  buoy  up  his  cause  by  fabu- 
lous lying.  You  cannot  impose  on  Us;  industry  would 
not  have  survived  this  prodigious  exhaustion  a  month. 

The  Founder — [with  the  weary  smile  of  one    who 


A   LKAGUK   OF  JUSTICE.  63 

has  shattered  political  economy  against  dull  minds  for 
many  a  year.]  The  books  of  these  firms,  when  inves- 
tigated by  experts  instructed  in  our  method,  will 
show.  As  to  what  trade  or  industry  would  bear,  what 
we  have  done  is  better  proof  than  theories  about  it. 
Society  is  in  higher  financial  condition  than  it  was 
before  this  tax  for  the  benefit  of  the  common  people 
was  levied.  The  more  those  .you  call  the  '  lowest 
ranks'  receive,  the  better  is  the  financial  condition  of 
the  whole. 

President  [growing  red  and  frowning  heavily] — 
You  are  not  here  to  give  lessons  to  the  Executive  and 
the  Bench  in  Political  Economy.  It  is  to  be  presumed 
that  Ourselves  and  this  learned  body  of  Judges  can 
speak  on  that  subject  with  a  little  more  wisdom  than 
an  ordinary  commercial  clerk. 

[Applause  from  the  spectators'  benches  occupied  by  the 
capitalists,  and  a  sound  of  sibilant  dissent  from  the 
aisles  back  of  the  railing,  where  the  working  men  and 
women  are  packed,  echoed  again  miles  away.  The 
president  being  too  angry  to  collect  his  economical 
senses,  the  Chief  Justice  of  the  learned  Bench  takes  up 
the  questioning.] 

Chief  Justice — What  is  your  salary  ? 

Founder — One  thousand  a  year. 

C.  Justice — How  long  have  you  received  so  much  ? 

Founder — Twenty  years. 

C.  Justice — And  before  that  your  salary  was  —  ? 

Founder — Twelve  hundred  dollars. 

C.  Justice  [turning  exultingly  to  the  capitalists]— 
You  see  he  was  a  second-rate  man  whose  deficiencies 
punished  him  with  a  reduction  of  wages. 


64  A   I.KAGUK   OF  JUSTICE. 

Founder — All  salaries  and  wages  were  cut  when 
mine  was: 

C.  Justice  [moving  in  his  chair] — How  was  that  ? 

Founder — When  the  company  consolidated  with 
others  in  a  trust,  the  salaries  of  all  who  owned  no 
stock  were  reduced,  as  well  as  the  wages  of  every 
working  man  and  woman  in  the  entire  system  of 
factories.  The  managers  said  there  were  plenty  of 
people  who  would  work  for  less  than  we  received 
after  the  cut,  and  that  their  own  profits  must  be  in — . 

C.  Justice  [dejectedly  interrupting] — These  details 
do  not  bear  on  the  point.  Your  previous  salary,  you 
said,  had  been  twelve  hundred  dollars  for  twenty 
years.  A  very  good  salary,  I  should  say. 

Founder — Allow  me  to  correct  you.  I  worked  the 
first  ten  years  for  five  hundred  dollars  a  year.  My 
pay  was  then  raised  to  eight  hundred.  Five  years 
after  it  was  raised  to  twelve  hundred.  With  the  trust 
regime  it  was  reduced  to  one  thousand  dollars,  and  no 
proposition  has  since  been  made  to  raise  it. 

C.  Justice — That  is  a  much  larger  sum  than  the  great 
majority  of  artisans  receive,  and  appears  to  me  ample 
remuneration  for  mechanical  clerical  service.  Capi- 
tal deserves  so  much  for  the  vast  services  she  renders 
to  industry  by  existing,  that  the  working  people  will 
have  to  get  along  with  less  and  less  from  this  time  on. 

[Terrible  groans  lire  heard  in  the  streets  as  these  words 
are  transmitted  from  mouth  to  mouth  among1  the  peo- 
ple. The  Chief  Justice  continues:] 

Will  you  now  kindly  tell  us  what  part  of  the  sums 
you  extricated  from  the  firm  you  so  faithfully  served 
you  applied  to  the  expansion  of  your  private  fortune  ? 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  65 

Founder — No  part. 

C.  Justice  [putting  on  the  well-known  judicial 
severity  like  an  impressive  ulster] — You  are  speaking 
under  oath,  and  though  an  oath  could  mean  but  little* 
to  one  of  your  deformity,  try  for  the  sake  of  your 
country  and  the  human  race  to  speak  the  truth  now. 

Founder  [laughing  with  fine  enjoyment  at  the  judi- 
cial bombast] — As  every  cent  ever  taken  passed  into  the 
hands  of  our  agents  who  gave  receipts, — 

C.  Justice  [interrupting] — laying  receipts! 

Founder — And  as  these  distributors  have  kept  the 
strictest  records  of  those  to  whom  help  was  furnished, 
the  honesty  of  these  accounts  could  be  pretty  correctly 
tested.  And  what  I  say  of  myself  is  true  of  every 
member  of  the  association. 

C.  Justice  [with  a  sneering  smile] — It  is  interesting 
to  hear  one  with  your  record  telling  of  his  honesty. 

Founder — But  I  will  now  say  to  you  plainly,  and 
for  the  benefit  of  all  the  working  people  listening  to 
this  trial  throughout  the  world,  that  people  who  are 
meagrely  paid  for  their  services  to  the  rich  would  be 
quite  justified  in  'stealing'  from  them  on  their  own 
account  and  for  themselves. 

[Prolonged  and  thundering-  cheers  follow  this  remark 
and  shake  the  building.  The  capitalists  are  frozen  with 
terror  and  the  trial  is  delayed  for  some  time.] 

C.  Justice  [at  length,  turning  to  the  president] — Your 
Sovereignty,  I  will  relinquish  to  my  colleagues  the 
pleasure  of  conversing  with  this  singular  individual. 

Another  Judge  [levels  his  pertified  eyes  at  the  crimi- 
nal and  proceeds] — Were  you  the  originator  of  this 
plan  for  the  wholesale  seduction  of  property? 


66  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

Founder — I  was. 

Judge — Inform  the  magistrates  how,  why,  when,  for 
what,  and  to  what  purpose. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 
THE  FOUNDER'S  STORY. 

The  Founder — My  father  was  a  frugal,  hard-work- 
ing farmer,  who  finally  underwent  the  fate  so  common 
to  that  class,  and  lost  his  land  after  a  succession  of 
mortgages.  He  had  overworked  for  a  long  time  to 
avert  the  calamity,  and  died  soon  after  it  came. 
I  was  then  fifteen  years  old.  A  relative  obtained  a 
position  for  me  in  a  city  store.  My  mother  could  not 
see  me  go  away  alone  at  that  age,  breaking  up  the 
family,  and  as  her  own  home  was  gone  she  accompan- 
ied me  with  the  three  younger  children.  She  had 
expected  some  rich  town  friends  of  her  earlier  years  to 
help  make  the  way  easier,  but  they  forgot  her.  We 
lived,  as  we  had  to,  in  poor  quarters;  my  mother 
sewed  ;  our  joint  wages  barely  kept  us.  Within  three 
years  two  of  the  younger  children  died.  I  had  then 
learned  book-keeping  and  secured  my  present  position. 
We  lived  better  upon  my  five  hundred  dollars  a 
year.  My  remaining  brother  entered  a  factory,  but 
never  was  strong  enough  to  make  the  best  wages,  his 
constitution  having  been  impaired  by  the  privations  of 
our  first  years  in  the  city.  Tenement  house  and  fac- 
tory life  continued  to  bear  unfavorably  upon  him,  and 
at  the  age  of  twenty-seven  he  died,  leaving  a  broken- 
down  wife  and  two  children,  whom  I  sent  to  a  coun- 
try town  and  mainly  supported  until  the  children  grew 


68  A  LEAGUE  OF  JUSTICE. 

up.  On  account  of  these  demands  011  my  income  I 
never  married. 

I  naturally  asked  myself  if  it  was  necessary  for  peo- 
ple to  be  crushed  and  suffering — burdened  through 
life  as  I  and  those  near  to  me  had  been.  My  employ- 
ers counted  their  .wealth  in  millions  ;  each  owned  sev- 
eral sumptuous  houses  and  lived  in  the  tropics  of 
luxury.  I  knew  of  a  great  number  of  business  and 
idle  men  with  similar  possessions  and  similar  habits  of 
life.  Pondering  these  disturbing  contrasts,  I  discov- 
ered a  clue.  If  these  millionaires,  greater  and  less, 
would  set  aside  annually  in  the  ratio  of  their  posses- 
sions a  sum  for  the  simple,  designed,  chosen,  express 
purpose  of  altering  the  social  foundation  upon  which 
the  poor  stand,  and  would  themselves,  with  the  same 
interest,  energy  and  intelligence  they  display  in  com- 
mercial affairs  of  their  own,  originate  and  carry  for- 
ward such  an  alteration,  or  would  appoint  intelligent 
and  capable  agents  to  do  it,  as  they  choose  agents  in 
their  own  business,  there  would  soon  be  neither  occa- 
sion nor  possibility  of  such  a  life  as  mine  or  of  such 
death  as  had  pruned  my  family  down. 

I  reasoned  that  the  rich  could  spare  enough  for  this 
beautiful  end  without  curtailing  a  comfort,  and, 
absorbed  in  my  vision  of  the  ineffable  happiness  and 
power  of  life  and  character  they  would  bestow  upon 
innumerable  others  by  these  slight  sacrifices,  I 
dreamed  that  it  was  only  necessary  to  reveal  to  them 
the  marvelous  commission  they  held  to  lead  the  old 
world  many  a  day's  journey  toward  paradise  and  per- 
fection, to  start  in  them  an  earnest  and  perpetual 
fondness  for  this  benign  generalship. 


A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  69 

I  arranged  a  lucid  plan,  showing,  '  with  a  little 
money  this  can  be  done,  with  a  little  more  that,  and 
with  yet  more  these  fifty  excellent  inventions  can  be 
mobilized,  and  by  the  time  they  are  in  action  half  of 
t\\e  poverty  and  suffering  will  capitulate,  and  in  less 
than  twenty-five  years  the  whole  face  of  the  earth  will 
wear  a  renovated  and  unrecognizable  aspect.'  I  set 
forth  in  columnar  demonstration — being  a  man  of  fig- 
ures and  business  —  the  sums  which  could  be  spared 
from  domestic  expenditures  by  the  capitalists  to  meet 
this  outlay,  and  proved  that  there  would  be  a  surplus 
for  theatres  left. 

Having  thus  fastened  the  plan  together  with  un- 
breakable bands  of  fact  and  screws  of  reason,  I  ap- 
proached the  emotional  side  of  the  subject  and  wrote 
a  sagacious  paragraph  on  the  cogency  of  commencing 
this  grand  sociological  migration  under  the  stimulat- 
ing concluctorship  of  the  great  capitalists,  for  if  they 
initiated  it,  so  commanding  is  the  authority  of  true 
worth,  high  character,  bottomless  brains  and  cyclo- 
pean  wealth,  that  the  men  of  littler  worth,  character, 
brains  and  property,  would  speedily  get  into  the  pro- 
cession. This  paragraph  I  reserved  for  the  richest, 
and  it  won  me  many  warm  admirers,  offers  of  per- 
sonal advancement,  scholarships  in  the  universities 
which  they  had  to  dispose  of,  and  the  management  of 
newspapers,  especially  if  I  would  write  leading  arti- 
cles setting  forth  my  opinions  on  this  subject. 

I  managed  to  shut  all  these  flattering  openings  with 
my  next  sentence,  which  implied  in  the  most  etherial 
language  I  knew,  never  an  unambiguous  word  being 
used  throughout  the  whole,  that  a  revolution  was 


yo  A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

walking  the  capitalist's  way,  which  might  reach  and 
destroy  him  before  he  heard  of  its  existence  if  some 
good-hearted  person -like  me  did  not  a<5l  as  sentinel  to 
warn  him. 

I  then  came  down  to  strict  oratory  and  told  the  cap- 
italists with  impassioned  utterance  that  they  were  the 
ones  and  the  only  ones  who  could  save  us  from  the 
danger  of  violence.  '  Think  of  it  !  '  I  cried  in  mighty 
wrath,  '  The  wealth  of  the  country,  the  shops  and  rail- 
roads and  everything  else  are  under  your  control  and 
owned  by  you.  You  are  conducting  these  things  in 
a  manner  which  brings  absolute  ruin  upon  a  great 
many,  and  wretchedness,  disappointment  and  collapse 
of  hope  upon  a  great  many  more.  Can  I  change  this  ? 
I  do  not  own  the  things.  Can  the  middle  class  change 
it  ?  They  again,  are  only  small,  uninfluential  owners. 
Can  the  working  people,  those  who  are  suffering 
most,  change  it  ?  No  ;  for  you  and  not  they  own  and 
operate  the  causes  of  their  sufferings.  And  you,  yoii 
could  change  it,  can  change  it  when  you  will  ;  you  can 
avert  the  violent  rising  of  the  masses  which  is  possi- 
ble. By  applying  the  wealth  which  the  masses  have 
made  for  you  to  placing  industrialism  on  a  different 
basis  and  carrying  society  wisely  through  the  transi- 
tion it  is  about  to  make  in  some  manner  to  a  higher 
plane,  you  could  render  some  recompense  for  the  pro- 
digious wrongs  you  have  done  the  poor  in  degrading 
them  by  robbing  them,  some  recompense  to  society  for 
bringing  it  to  the  edge  of  destruction. 

'  You  are  responsible,  you  rich,  you  capitalists  :  not 
you  as  a  system,  but  you  personally,  each  one  of  you. 
You  are  public  enemies.  You  can  only  redeem  your- 


A   I.KAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  7 1 

selves  from  this  stain  by  acting  soon  and  undoing  the 
infamous  hurt  you  have  done  all.  You,  then,  I  brand 
and  attack.  You,  each  ;  not  a  shadowy  impersonal 
thing  called  the  '  social  system.'  You  board  and  bed 
the  social  system,  fire  it  up  and  run  it,  own,  manage 
and  milk  money  out  of  it,  and  then  you  plead  innocence 
of  its  crimes  !  Oh,  blameless  ones,  you  are  the  mur- 
derers of  everyone  murdered  by  this  system,  the  cause 
of  all  the  terrible  ruin  to  human  beings  it  accom- 
plishes. You  are  the  dire,  callous,  devilish  cause. 
Repent  and  turn  your  stolen  riches  to  undo  this,  or  the 
down-trampled,  infuriated  people  will  find  you  out, 
and  then  what  ?  ' 

Armed  with  this  subtle  document  I  visited  the  cap- 
italists, going  first  to  those  who  employed  me.  The 
great  leading  man  in  our  concern,  wyho  had  worked 
himself  up  to  that  summit  by  the  death  of  his  father, 
was  affable,  listened  to  my  sketch  and  then  to  what  I 
could  say  in  its  favor,  restraining  his  deliberating 
judgment  until  all  was  through.  Then  he  spoke,  and  I 
saw  how  it  was  that  he  was  such  a  power  in  the  world. 
"You  have  excellent  ideas,"  he  said  in  measured, 
anathematical  tones,  and  the  north  star  seemed  to 
revolve  about  him,  "  but  they  are  not  practical.  In 
two  or  three  thousand  years  they  may  be  practical. 
As  an  irresponsible  clerk  everything  looks  extremely 
simple  to  you.  My  great  responsibility  on  your 
shoulders  for  just  one  clay  would  crush  you  to  atoms, 
and  you  would  understand  why  it  is  not  practical. 
Responsibility  opens  one's  eyes  and  makes  him  practi- 
cal. Now  I  am . practical ;  and  just  in  a  practical, 
friendly  way  I  must  advise  you  not  to  spend  too  much 


72  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

time  flying  your  little  theoretical  kites  and  telling  peo- 
ple how  to  improve.  We  don't  want  people  to 
improve,  we  want  tfrem  to  work,  and  you  belong  to 
that  number." 

He  had  reached  ground  where  he  was  at  home, 
beating  the  brains  out  of  working  people  according 
to  the  scriptures  of  industry ;  his  concentrated  eyes 
bulged,  and  lest  they  should  split  or  fly  out  of  his 
head  at  me  like  bullets,  I  thought  it  was  time  to  go. 
.Where  was  his  affability  ?  I  had  forgotten  that  I  was 
only  his  workingman. 

I  was  not  discouraged.  For  several  months,  after 
hours,  I  wandered  on  my  pilgrimage  among  the  capi- 
talists. Some  refused  to  see  me,  saying  their  time  was 
too  precious  for  the  contemplation  of  charitable  ob- 
jects; some  were  wroth  because  they  averred  I  threat- 
ened them  in  saying  that  they  and  they  alone  held  the 
key  to  the  situation  and  could  avert  violence,  and 
they  declared  I  ought  to  be  imprisoned  to  keep  me 
from  spreading  my  ridiculous  nonsense  about  them  ;  a 
third  lot  took  it  as  a  good  joke.  "  My  good  fellow," 
said  one,  "  these  working  people  get  all  they  deserve. 
They  would  spend  the  rest  in  drink  and  idleness." 

I  replied  I  had  never  heard  any  one  say  that  before, 
and  asked  him  if  he  thought  that  I,  who  had  lived 
long  among  the  poorest  and  had  been  one  of  them, 
ought  to  know. 

"Ah,  but  you  don't  know  as  well  as  I  do,"  he 
responded." 

"But  how  do  you  know?  "  I  insisted. 

"  A  member  of  my  family  who  represents  intellect, 


A  I,E:AGUK  OF  JUSTICE.  73 

and  is  in  fact  a  trained  intelligence,  keeps  an  eye  on 
the  slums,"  he  said. 

"  Read  this,"  I  remarked,  passing  him  an  editorial 
from  the  London  Times  on  the  subject  of  a  new  free 
library  in  East  London. 

"  It  won't  change  my  mind,"  he  answered,  but  he 
read  it. 

"  In  the  first  place,"  he  read,  "  people  whose  earn- 
ings are  such  as  to  make  every  six-pence  spent  a 
serious  matter,  cannot  buy  books,  even  cheap  ones. 
In  the  second  place  —  and  the  consideration  is  still 
more  important — if  a  whole  family  has  to  live  in  two 
rooms,  there  is  neither  room  for  the  reader  nor 
for  his  books ;  nor  is  there  likely  to  be  much  of  the 
necessary  quiet." 

'  The  Times  was  never  known  to  embellish  the  bar- 
renness of  the  poor,"  I  suggested.  "There  are 
*  whole  families'  that  have  to  live  in  two  rooms." 

"  I  know  how  to  answer  that,"  said  he.  "  I've 
heard  it  answered  before." 

"How?"  said  I. 

Said  he,  "That  is  in  London,  not  in  Americ^. 
This  is  a  free  country  and  we  do  not  have  such  things. 
And  if  we  have  them  it's  the  fault  of  the  two-roomed 
people,  who  have  not  brains  to  earn  more  than  two 
rooms.  There's  nothing  bad  about  living  in  two 
rooms  either.  The  intelligent  member  of  my  family 
has  found  plenty  of  families,  children  and  all,  liv- 
ing in  two  rooms  and  perfectly  happy,  contented  and 
religious.  Go  to  Europe  with  your  plan,  for  it  is  not 
needed  here." 

"  Do  the  two-roomed  people  read  ?  "  I  interjected. 


74  A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

"Read?"  cried  he,  "why  should  they  read?  I 
don't  read  ?  " 

"  Break  your  rule  and  look  at  this,"  I  said. 

"  Is  it  long  ?  "  queried  he. 

"  The  words  are  not  long,"  was  my  rejoinder,  "  but 
perhaps  I  had  better  read  it  to  you." 

"  Do  so,"  he  acquiesced. 

I  read : 

"  The  testimony  of  Mr.  George  R.  Humphery,  who 
has  been  in  charge  for  twenty  years  of  the  books  read 
by  factory  people  in  England,  in  regard  to  their  read- 
ing habits  and  opportunities  is  worth  something  to  the 
thousands  of  persons  in  New  England  who  are  con- 
nected with  the  factories  as  operatives,  an.d  who  have 
limited  opportunities  for  reading.  He  well  states  the 
difficulties  under  which  any  trustworthy  and  success- 
ful work  is  accomplished  by  the  industrial  classes.  In 
the  first  place,  very  few  of  these  people  can  afford  a 
separate  room  for  study.  Again,  they  are  constantly 
compelled  to  work  overtime,  and  this  interferes  with  a 
regular  course  of  study.  It  either  prevents  the 
attending  of  classes  at  an  evening  school,  or  it  renders 
a  man  unfit  to  read  at  home.  If  the  men  are  serious 
to  become  masters  of  their  trade,  they  must  spend 
some  time  in  the  evening  in  working  out  problems 
that  have  perplexed  them  during  the  day.  They  aie 
often  without  work,  and  the  difficulty  of  obtaining 
new  positions  interferes  with  their  regular  acquisition 
of  knowledge.  All  these  drawbacks  interfere  with 
the  regular  reading  or  study  of  the  working  classes. 
They  must  be  remembered  when  we  consider  what  it 
is  possible  for  them  to  accomplish.'  " 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  75 

' '  Would  you  like  some  more?  "  I  asked. 

' 'I  didn't  ask  for  any  of  it,"  said  he. 

''Take  a  little  more,  then,  while  you  have  the 
chance,"  I  remarked;  and  I  recited  a  few  more 
extracts  about  "  these  people." 

"  '  It  is  only  a  limited  degree  of  reading  that  is  pos- 
sible to  our  factory  population.  .  .  .  The  most  that 
can  be  done  for  the  intellectual  improvement  of  these 
people  is  to  supply  them  with  such  works  of  fiction  or 
biography  or  of  popular  scientific  exposition  as  are 
within  their  comprehension.  .  .  .  For  the  most  part 
the  readers  among  the  working  classes  are  persons 
who  are  not  prepared  by  education  to  take  up  what  is 
profound  and  thorough.'  ' 

' f  What  agitator  wrote  that  incendiary  stuff  ?  "  he 
questioned  contemptuously. 

"The  Boston  Herald,'*  was  my  answer;  "April 
1 3th,  1893." 

Said  he,  "  It's  terrible  when  a  reliable  capital  sheet 
prostitutes  itself  like  that.  If  these  silly  newspapers 
do  not  keep  the  truth  out  of  sight  a  little  more  skil- 
fully we  shall  take  a  header  into  chaos." 

"So  I  said  in  my  epistle  to  the  capitalists,"  I 
added. 

"But  not  in  your  way,  and  not  by  our  fault," 
wailed  he.  It'll  be  because  the  common  people  do 
not  know  anything  and  want  to  own  everything. ' ' 

"  Give  them  a  chance  to  read  and  learn,"  finished 
I,  quitting  him. 

By  this  time  I  thought  it  trying  enough  to  visit 
native  capitalists  without  attempting  European  •  ones 
as  I  had  been  bidden. 


76  A   LEAGUE    OF  JUSTICE. 

The  next  one  gave  me  a  dissertation  on  my  one-eyed 
way  of  looking  at  things.  "  Open  the  other  side  of 
your  brain,"  quoth  he,  "and  use  that  awhile.  Go 
and  improve  the  people";  spend  your  energies  that  way ; 
make  them  meek,  teach  them  obedience  to  their  em- 
ployers ;  don't  be  finding  fault  with  us  rich,  world  with- 
out end.  I'm  tired  of  hearing  it.  Fault-finders  never 
accomplish  anything.  Tell  the  common  people  their 
duties  to  us.  They  don't  work  half  as  much . as  we 
want  them  to  ;  they  are  not  faithful.  The  trouble  with 
them  is  they  need  religion.  I  haven't  any  opinion  of 
your  plan,  but  let  me  tell  you  you  must  be  broad- 
minded  and  all-sided  or  you  can't  get  any  influential 
person  interested  in  it." 

After  this  I  reflected  a  few  days,  having  learned 
something.  I  had  been  a  child  before.  Now  I  was  a 
man.  I  had  ascribed  the  conduct  of  the  rich  men's 
lives  to  their  ignorance,  thinking  that  if  they  knew 
the  hell  they  create  and  keep  in  running  order  and 
temporally  eternalize  for  the  working  many  of  man- 
kind, they  would  swiftly  stop  its  mouth  up,  close  its 
furnaces,  and  fill  up  its  lakes.  Now  I  knew  better. 
I  now  saw  that  they  were  determined  to  live  on  as 
they  liked  though  hell  ate  up  the  poor  here  and 
hereafter.  Now  I  realized  that  their  course  of  life 
was  deliberate,  intentional,  planned,  and  the  cause  of 
it  I  realized — impregnable  .selfishness,  irreducible 
indifference  and  a  petrifaction  of  soul  not  to  be  dis- 
solved or  granulated. 

The  winged  truth  sped  through  my  mind  that  if  I 
went  to  the  ocean  and  prayed  and  appealed  to  it,  I 
should  accomplish  more  than  by  appealing  and  palter- 


A   I.KAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  77 

ing  to  the  rich  for  justice,  humanity  and  restoration  to 
the  poor.  "  Abandon  our  luxuries,  abandon  one  lux- 
ury to  give  those  coarse,  remote,  servile  animals,  the 
common  people,  food  and  decency  and  happiness  and 
life  ?  We  the  hyper-excellent,  drawing-room  distilled, 
soul-washed-and-ironed,  blood-desiccated,  picked-over 
and  sieved  for  two  generations  like  skimmed  flour 
bereft  of  its  wheatfulness, —  we,  the  capitalists,  aban- 
don a  privilege  or  luxury  for  the  unsifted  proletarian 
slum-soiled  millions  living  down  in  the  bowels  of 
nowhere  ?  No  ;  the  earth  is  ours  and  the  fulness 
thereof,  ours  shall  it  remain  forever  and  ever." 

"Yes,"  repeated  I,  without  knowing  what  I  said, 
moved  by  some  power  in  the  elements  about  me. 
' '  Yours  it  shall  remain  while  the  clammy  sky  of  the 
slums  coagulates  the  brains  of  the  anthropoid  fishes 
who  swim  in  those  gases;  but  what  if  they  should 
rise  to  the  light  and  read  the  sacred  message  of  re- 
sistance ?  ' ' 

I  was  very  much  disheartened.  To  confirm  my 
despondency  came  a  notice  from  the  shrine  of  the  tab- 
ernacle of  the  trust  where  I  sacrificed  myself,  that  my 
place  would  be  needed  for  someone  else  if  I  continued 
to  stir  up  the  social  sediment  with  the  broken  reed  of 
demagoguery .  '  You  have  not  neglected  your  duties, ' 
oracled  the  note,  '  but  you  are  busying  yourself  with 
things  which  not  concern  you  and  may  make  us 
poor  indeed ;  you  are  making  yourself  a  target  of  ridi- 
cule in  the  decorating  eyes  of  the  financial  archangels.' 

It  had  already  ceased.  '  Go  with  your  staff  of 
progress  to  stir  up  the  capitalists  to  righteousness  and 
public  salvation,'  said  I,  'and  it  will  be  with  you  as 


78  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

it  was  with  the  man  who  went  to  stir  up  the  philan- 
thropic sentiments  of  the  surface  of  the  sun.' 

But  they  had  vowed  that  nothing  could  be  done, 
not  if  they  gave  the  money 'to  the  new  laying  of  social 
bed-rocks,  not  if  they  gave  ten  thousand  times  ten 
thousand  more  than  they  had  to  give.  I  concluded  to 
show  them  what  could  be  done.  You  know  the 
results. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

SENTENCE. 

The  Judge — The  results!  Yes,  you  have  corrupted 
society,  you  have  undermined  respect  for  law,  you 
have  struck  a  stunning  blow  at  morality  and  religion.; 
for  you  have  robbed,  defied  the  commandments, 
trampled  on  sacred  Trusts,  and  all  the  good  you  falsely 
lay  claim  to  springs  from  this  million-fold  greater 
evil! 

Founder — What  we  have  done  was  not  robbery. 

All  the  Judges  [in  great  excitement] — What  is  that 
you  say  ?  Have  you  not  taken  millions  which  did 
not  belong  to  you  ? 

Founder  —  We  made  ourselves  the  agents  of  tho^e 
who  were  robbed  and  overreached  to  restore  to  them 
their  property.  If  a  man  steals  your  pocket-book, 
and  I,  without  the  knowledge  of  the  thief,  take  it 
away  from  him  and  return  it  to  you,  am  I  a  thief? 

Judge  —  This  is  rank  anarchist  absurdity  !  No  one 
has  stolen  but  your  precious  crew.  The  rich  whom 
you  call  robbers  have  broken  no  law  or  they  would 
have  been  prosecuted  and  imprisoned. 

Founder  —  What  if  a  party  of  thieves  formed  the 
strongest  element  in  a  community  and  made  a  law 
saying  it  was  right  and  legal  for  them  to  take  the  pro- 
perty of  all  men :  — would  that  make  it  right  ? 

Judge —  No. 

Rounder — And  if  some  other  men  secretly  took  from 


80  A    LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

the  law-makers  and  robbers  what  they  had  legally 
wrenched  from  other  citizens  and  returned  it  to  them, 
that  would  be  right  ? 

Judge  —  It  would.    - 

Founder — That  is  what  we  have  done. 

Judge — A  fine  argument  so  far,  but  I  am  waiting 
to  see  how  you  make  out  that  the  rich  are  the  robbers. 

Founder —  Any  man  who  takes  and  uses  for  himself 
more  than  is  necessary  for  his  life  and  health  and  de- 
velopment, or  for  the  life,  health  and  development  of 
those  dependent  on  him,  while  others  lack  what  is 
necessary  for  their  life,  health  and  development,  is  a 
robber. 

Judge  —  Ah,  you  say  this,  do  you  !  And  these  are 
your  fine  principles  ! 

Founder — Yes,  and  I  will  not  be  so  vague  either, 
for  the  opportunities  of  all  must  be  equal  and  he  who 
would  make  any  of  them  private  property  while  others 
have  less  is  a  robber. 

Judge  —  Such  doctrines  -would  destroy  the  founda- 
tions of  property  and  wreck  society.  People  of  your 
depraved  stamp  are  only  fit  for  the  mad  house,  the 
prison  or  the  gallows,  and  I  think  the  prison  will  be 
the  place  for  you. 

Founder — I  have  done  my  life  work  and  now  it 
matters  little  what  comes  to  me.  We  have  proved  by 
a  right  application  of  a  portion  of  the  surplus  wealth 
of  society,  that  society  can  be  radically  transformed, 
the  individual  members  of  it  made  infinitely  more 
virtuous  and  intelligent,  and  suffering  and  misery 
caused  almost  to  disappear  in  a  few  years.  What 
would  the  whole  surplus  luxury-wealth  of  the  coiyitry 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  8 1 

do  if  expended  thus  ?  I  now  realize  that  a  century  of 
such  expenditure  would  do  for  society  what  it  is 
wholly  impossible  to  imagine,  for  I  apprehend  it  would 
produce  of  mankind  a  race  as  far  above  us  as  we  are 
above  the  variegated  African- Ethiopian  in  his  primi- 
tive jungle.  What  you  do  with  us  will  only  brace  our 
work ;  the  fruits  of  it  will  be  ever  greater,  never 
less. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE   PEOPLE,    AT   LAST. 

[It  is  the  following  day.     The  place  is  the  same,  and  the 
streets  are  more  densely  packed,  for  millions  have  been 
arriving  from  every  direction  during  the  night. 
The  president  of  the  Republic  has  recovered  his  sanity 
and  composure  and  opens  the  court.] 
President  —  We  have  conferred  during  the  night  and 
discussed  the  uncontradicted  testimony  obtained  as  it 
were  from  the  very  teeth  of  your  conspiracy.     We  feel 
our    station    somewhat    elevated    in   life — although 
that  could  scarcely  be  unless  crowns  were  placed  upon 
our  heads  —  elevated  by  the  sublime  destiny  centripe- 
talized  in  us  as  vindicators  of  God  and  Abraham  and 
Moses  and  all  the  owners  of  property  since  their  time, 
as  well  as  of  the  divinely  inspired  writers  011  the  sub- 
ject of  property.     We  seem  to  be  chosen  instruments 
to  pick  the  fragments  of  morality  up  out  of  the  slime 
into  which  you  have  cast  them,  and  to  write  again  the 
ten  commandments  for  the  future  on  tables  of  immortal 
gold.     How  great  should  be  our  reward  in  heaven  for 
this  service  !  greater  still   our  reward   on   earth  [the 
capitalists   applaud],  and   our  names   should  be  en- 
scrolled  with  those  of  Lycurgus,  Jeremiah,  William 
the  Conqueror  and  other  legal  sages.     ["  They  shall 
be,  we  swear  it,"  whispered  the  capitalists,  "it  won't 
cost  much."] 

To  tie  down  virtue  on  this  planet,  which  was  about 
to  fly  away  dismayed  at  your  blaspheming,  we  consign 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  83 

your  fifty  thousand  bodies  to  fifty  thousand  dungeons 
while  they  live  and  to  fifty-thousand  doctors  when  they 
are  dead,  and  we  decree  that  your  entire  worldly  pos- 
sessions shall  be  turned  over  to  the  capitalists  who 
have  suffered  from  your  gigantic  flintiness  of  heart. 

One  of  the  League  —  They  '11  not  get  much,  we  used 
our  property  for  the  good  of  the  race. 

President  —  And  we  further  ordain  that  all  proper- 
ties such  as  printing  presses,  buildings,  co-operative 
factories  and  the  like,  which  can  be  directly  or  indi- 
rectly traced  to  funds  taken  from  employers  shall  be 
turned  back  to  them. 

A  Man  in  the  court  room  —  This  will  ruin  the  peo- 
ple's journals  ! 

Another  Man — And  keep  us  from  knowing  the 
truth  about  anything,  as  it  used  to  be. 

[As  the  judgment  makes  its  way  outside,  groans  are 
heard  which  finally  become  so  terrible  that  the  court 
windows  break. 

President — And  finally  be  our  will  known,  that 
whosoever  has  received  aught  of  these  capitalists' 
moneys,  whether  women,  children  or  strikers,  shall  be 
holden  to  reimburse  these  sums,  and  the  titles  of  all 
farms  and  houses  which  have  been  purchased  for  the 
poor  in  any  place  shall  be  made  over  to  those  from 
whom  the  money  to  buy  them  came. 

A  Woman  - —  Now  we  are  undone  indeed.  My  house 
will  go. 

An  Old  Man  —  Oh  this  cruelty  !  The  capitalists 
will  own  everything. 

Capitalist — Now  that  is  justice.  Our  protectors 
cannot  be  intimidated. 


84  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

Second  Capitalist  —  It  serves  them  right  and  is  none 
too  severe.  I  would  have  had  the  four  ringleaders 
strung  up.  It's  worse  than  murder  to  attack  property. 
I  shall  be  fifty  million  dollars  richer  after  this. 

A  Voice  [cries  exultingly] — How  will  it  be  known 
whom  the  stolen  money  went  to  help  ? 

[The  jaws  of  all  the  capitalists  drop;  the  president, 
cabinet  and  judges  look  as  if  they  had  lost  a  year's 
salary.] 

A  Bright  Man  in  the  crowd —  The  volumes  of  the 
League's  records  will  show  that,  at  least  the  Founder 
said  so. 

The  Multitude  —  Destroy  the  records  !  Destroy  the 
records  ! 

[The  capitalists  gather  round  the  records  —  which  are  in 
the  court  room  —  in   a   body,  and  the  president  com- 
mands the  regular  army  to  prepare  to  fire  on  the  crowd. 
Word  is  sent  to  the  police,  including  the  two  hundred 
and  forty-nine  thousand  who  had  been  unjustly  jailed, 
to  prepare  for  a  general  slaughter.] 
A  Capitalist  —  A   lot   of  these  people  ought   to  be 
killed.    If  we  don't  make  an  example   of  them  now 
they'll  never  give  us  peace  and  profits  again. 

A  number  of  working  women  [jostling  the  capital- 
ists] —  You  are  the  ones  who  ought  to  go  to  prison. 

A  Woman  [shrieking  at  the  top  of  her  voice  to  the 
working  men]  —  Oh  you  cowards  ! 

Capitalists  [in  low  tones  among  themselves]  —  This 
is  pretty  serious.  It  is  time  to  shoot. 

Another — Yes,  blood  always  brings  the  scum  to  its 
senses. 

A  Workingman  in  the  court  room — Think  what  these 
men  have  done  for  us. 


A   1.3  AGUE   OP  JUSTICE.  85 

Second  Workingman  —  I  would  rather  go  to  prison 
for  life  myself. 

Another — The  capitalists  will  soon  have  us  down 
on  the  ground  again  and  then  under  ground.  This  is 
damnable  !  I  can't  stand  it. 

Another  [stamping]  —  If  American  workingmen 
only  had  some  of  the  blood  of  the  Belgians  in  them  ! 

A  Foreign  Workman  [calmly  looking  on]  —  Ameri- 
ican  workingmen  are  the  most  cowardly  in  the 
world. 

Several  Women  [forcing  their  way  through  the 
crowd  in  a  frenzy]  —  It's  a  lie.  Before  to-day's  over 
you'll  know  whether  they're  cowards  ! 

The  President  [mounting  a  chair]  —  I  command 
the  crowd  in  My  name  to  disperse  on  pain  of  death. 
The  officers  will  conduct  the  prisoners  to  their  doom. 

A  Woman  [in  hysterics]  —  That  man  saved  my 
children  from  starvation  when  my  husband  died. 

One  of  the  Regular  Policemen  —  Some  of  those  fel- 
lows looked  after  my  sick  father  when  he  lost  his  job 
and  the  landlord  turned  him  on  to  the  street. 

Ten  thousand  men  on  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd 
[from  the  West,  armed  with  shot  guns]  —  Did  they 
say  we  were  to  give  our  farms  to  the  capitalists  ? 

Another  squad  [approaching  in  the  distance]  —  Oh 
no,  not  yet  ! 

The  President  [stepping  on  to  the  table]  —  Take 
them  to  jail,  I  say  ! 

249,000  arrested  clerk-police  [sullenly]  —  If  we  go 
back  to  clerk  for  these  capitalist  robbers  we'll  steal 
everything  they  have. 

The  Croivd  outside  —  We'll  not  desert  our  friends. 


86  A   LEAGUE    OF  JUSTICE. 

The  Capitalists  [to  the  policemen]  —  Do  your  duty 
and  take  these  villains  to  jail. 

A  Policeman  [throwing  down  his  club]  —  I'll  have 
nothing  to  do  with  it. 

Other  Policemen  [following  his  example]  — Nor  I, 
nor  I.  We've  served  you  rich  swine  long  enough. 
We'll  be  bull  dogs  for  you  no  more. 

Capitalists —  Swine  !  Do  you  dare  call  us  swine  ? 
Remember  we  can  hang  you. 

Policemen — Animals  who  take  all  they  can  get  and 
leave  others  who  cannot  crowd  their  way  to  the  food 
nothing,  are  swine. 

Capitalists,  president  and  judges  [frantically]  — 
We'll  double  your  pay  ! 

Policemen  —  It's  too  late.  You  can't  hire  us  now. 
We're  done  working  for  money  bags.  We'll  work 
hereafter  for  justice  and  the  people. 

Chief  of  the  armed  249,000  —  And  you've  got  to 
settle  with  us  yet ! 

[The  noise  without  increases. 

Later  in  the  day  the  capitalists,  president  and  judges, 
with  a  few  militia-men  composed  of  butlers  and  foot- 
men, together  with  the  regular  army  and  navy,  have 
fled  to  the  banks  and  newspaper  buildings  and  barri- 
caded themselves  in  as  best  they  could. 
Immense  throngs  of  people  surge  through  the  streets, 
cracking  the  walls  of  the  buildings  with  their  momen- 
tum. Meetings  of  the  multitude  are  being  held  in  the 
squares  and  over  the  country  for  fifty  miles  out.] 

Speaker  [to  the  people  :  ]— 

For  twelve  years  we  have  been  living  in  light  and 
hope.  We  knew  not  what  was  doing  this  for  us,  but 


A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE.  87 

now  we  know.  Shall  we  abandon  those  who  made 
the  noble  venture  and  mighty  sacrifice  for  us,  who 
took  freedom  in  their  hands,  scorned  fate,  and  devoted 
their  lives  to  making  human  beings  of  us  ? 

A  Thousand  Voices  —  No!  No!  We're  not  such 
poltroons ! 

Speaker  —  Shall  we  allow  ourselves  to  be  forced 
back  to  that  degradation  and  slavery  from  which  we 
and  our  class  have  been  lifted  for  the  first  time  in  this 
earth's  annals  ? 

The  Crowd  [in  long  resounding  cries] — Never, 
while  one  of  us  lives. 

Speaker —  Then  we  must  put  an  end  to  capitalism 
now.  We  must  finish  that  old  accursed  system  from 
which  we  have  so  long  suffered.  There's  no  half  way 
work  possible  any  longer.  Our  old  masters  will  grind 
us  to  powder  if  we  give  them  the  upper  hand  again. 

The  Crowd  —  Down  with  the  masters  !  Down  with 
capitalism  ! 

Speaker —  Then  let  us  send  a  deputation  to  them, 
giving  them  their  choice.  Either  they  may  yield 
peaceably  and  unite  with  us  to  organize  society  on  a 
just  basis,  or  we  notify  them  that  we,  the  irresistible 
people,  will  proceed  to  that  work  without  them. 

Many  Voices  [amid  earth-shaking  cheers]  — That 
we  will !  That  we  will ! 

[/Scene — Before  the  Stock  Exchange,  wliich  is  the  princi- 
pal capitalist  fort.] 

Spokesman  for  the  Capitalists  [from  an  upper  win- 
dow. The  president  and  the  regular  army  stand  be- 
hind him  for  protection]  —  What  if  we  refuse  your 
demands  ? 


SS  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

Working  People —  Then  we  shall  ignore  you  and 
set  about  completing  the  transformation  of  industry 
Avhicli  the  men  you  have  sentenced  to  prison  have 
carried  so  far  and  taught  us  how  to  carry  farther. 

Capitalist  Spokesman — Will  you  confiscate  our 
property  ? 

Working  People  — It  is  not  yours.  We  shall  take  the 
property  you  abominably  call  yours,  which  you  have 
accumulated  from  us  and  through  our  labor,  and  make 
an  equal  partnership,  where  you  will  have  a  voice  if 
you  choose,  but  no  more  influential  voice  than  anyone 
else. 

('.  Spokesman  —  We  will  prevent  that  with  arms. 
We  will  die  sooner  than  give  up  what  is  ours  and 
make  terms  to  ruffianly  social  dregs  and  marauders. 

Working  People —  To  every  hundred  of  you  there 
are  a  million  dregs.  You  can  do  nothing.  No  one  but 
the  automaton  army  will  sell  himself  to  shoot  down  the 
people  oi  his  own  class  and  blood  for  your  benefit 
:igain,  ana  the  people  can  destroy  the  army  if  neces- 
sary in  ten  minutes.  You  had  better  think  twice. 

CafiJtaiists  [quaking  among  themselves]  —  It  is 
true,  we  had.  We  are  lost. 

C.  Spokesman  [to  the  multitudes]  —  You  have  no 
competent  leaders  without  us. 

Marking  People — We  are  all  leaders  now,  since  we 
have  had  a  little  education.  We'll  have  more  educa- 
tion. We'll  never  give  our  bodies  and  destinies  again 
to  bosses  in  this  world  ! 

C.  S/>okeswa/i — But  how  can  industry  be  organi/.ed 
on  an  equality  ?  It  is  impossible.  It  would  lead  to 


A   LEAGUE   OP  JUSTICE.  89 

chaos.  No  one  would  save.  The  idle  would  live  on 
the  industrious. 

Working  People — That  is  what  your  newspapers 
have  always  been  saying,  but  the  hundreds  of  mills 
which  the  working  people  have  come  to  own  on  that 
very  principle  of  equality  since  the  League  of  Justice 
began  to  distribute  wealth  a  little  more  fairly,  prove 
that  it  is  a  lie.  Working  people  save  if  they  have 
anything  to  save  for  and  anything  to  save  from.  The 
idle  who  have  not  inherited  too  bad  an  organization  as 
a  legacy  of  the  capitalists'  regime  are  put  under  special 
conditions  of  labor,  and  the  really  and  thoroughly  bad 
are  soon  singled  out  and  treated  like  the  sick  which 
they  are.  Then  they  are  known  and  treated  and  can- 
not impose  on  the  rest  of  society,  as  they  could  under 
the  old  social  Disarrangement. 

Capitalists  |  altogether  ;  their  eyes  suddenly  filling 
with  beams  of  hope] — You'll  at  least  leave  us  our 
land  and  railroads  and  such  things  ? 

Working  People  [with  .scorn]  —  We'll  at  least 
leave  you  nothing  of  the  sort.  This  is  not  a  play  rev- 
olution. We  propose  to  have  the  sources  of  wealth  on 
this  earth  used  for  human  good,  hereafter,  not  for  your 
private  amusement — you,  a  little  shiftless  group  of 
enormous  spendthrifts,  bragging  ever  and  ever  more 
of  economy  and  abstinence. 

Capitalists  [after  earnest  and  protracted  consultation 
in  which  the  army  chaplain  is  several  times  called 
upon  to  offer  prayer]  —  It  is  clear  that  we  are  beaten, 
and  we  might  as  well  make  the  best  of  a  situation  fof 
which  there  is  no  help. 


90  A   LEAGUE   OF  JUSTICE. 

[They  come  down  into  the  streets  and  are  greeted  with 
cordial  hand  shaking's  and  thundering  cheers  by  the  pro- 
pie.] 

A  Former  Capitalist  —  I  see  how  the  factory  that  was 
mine  can  be  run  in  common,  give  the  largest  possibility 
for  the  initiative  of  all  and  not  for  the  manager  only,  and 
have  the  proceeds  shared  for  the  best  development  and 
happiness  of  all  too.  I  knew  how  this  could  have 
been  done  all  the  time. 

Surrounding  People  [hilariously]  —  Oh,  we  know 
how  that  can  be  done  !  But  none  of  it  to-day.  Let 
every  man,  woman  and  child  work  for  the  banquet  to- 
night !  There  never  was  a  day  like  this  ! 

Another  Former  Capitalist —  This  is  life  !  I've  been 
a  dog  all  my  days.  I'm  glad  the  change  has  come. 
I 'in  tired  of  slave-driving  the  working  people.  I  breathe 
for  the  first  time  now,  and  so  many  good  years  gone  ! 

People  —  There  never  was  a  day  like  this  ! 


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